Topical Tropes

These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.

"Winter Wrap Up" seems to have the message "If you have no talent, and are good at nothing, go into management" (or "managers are incompetent at everything except bossing people around"), even though Twilight wound up the All-Team Organizer because she actually is good at getting things organized (and everypony else stinks at it).

"Suited for Success" provides the explicit moral of "don't look a gift horse in the mouth", and the implicit moral of "if you hire a professional to do a job, let THEM do the job they're paid for."

"Feeling Pinkie Keen" was interpreted by many as the triumph of religious dogma over skepticism. According to Lauren Faust, this was totally unintentional, and she was a little freaked out when folks on DeviantArt started complaining about it.

The moral of "The Show Stoppers" was probably intended to be "Be Yourself, and embrace your natural talents," but to some fans it came off as "Don't waste your time trying new things. Just stick to what you're good at, even if you hate it." Or maybe that things you do in your spare time for fun are most likely to be the things you're really good at.

It can be misinterpreted as "Whining will make everyone bend to your whims!" Or alternatively, "If someone accuses you of whining, pull the Rarity card!"

Also, "Just ignore it when your friend gets kidnapped; they can probably handle themselves." Actually averted since they DID manage to come to her aid eventually.

"Cutie Mark Chronicles" is about "be patient and be yourself and you'll learn who you are", and "Sweet and Elite" is about "don't be ashamed of where you come from" but both have the sub-lesson of "city people are shallow, snobby, and sneer down their noses at anything outside their experience, so don't let their opinions sway you."

"Owl's Well That Ends Well" and "Lesson Zero" both have "if you blow off your friend's concerns/feelings/freakouts, it will cause more trouble", which apparently means Aesop Amnesia as Twilight learned it in the first and then freaked out in the second.

"Lesson Zero":

Celestia's amendment at the end sort of turns the moral into "if your friend has a psychotic breakdown, you're obligated to share her homework load. Even if you don't go to school." It may also be interpreted as "you will take OCD seriously, or terrible things will happen."

The episode also has the lesson the CMC should've learned: "If someone offers you something you really don't want, you can politely turn it down and not trying to dance around avoiding accepting it to avoid hurt feelings. Honesty is the best policy."

The moral of "Cutie Pox" is about having patience and that good things come to those who wait. While this is a valid aesop, it's not exactly the real aesop of the episode, which was earning what you want and not cheating by taking short cuts and being dishonest.

In "The Mysterious Mare Do Well" many fans seem read to this one as "it's okay to humiliate your friends to teach them a lesson of humility." It wouldn't be the first time a lesson about hubris fumbled slightly.

"Cutie Mark Chronicles", "The Best Night Ever" and "Sweet or Elite" all have the secondary lesson of "If you're from a quaint and sweet little provincial town, all the rich big city people are going to be shallow snobs who sneer at you and your "country" ways." So far the only exceptions have been Hoity Toity from "Suited For Success" (who was fairly impressed with Rarity's original designs for the dresses she made) and Fancypants from "Sweet and Elite" (who seemed to think that Rarity's Ponyville friends were "charmingly rustic")

Fridge Brilliance: No matter one's race, color, or creed, we all question the sanity of upper management (at least sometimes). Notice that the "assistant" ponies bonded over shaking their heads at their superiors' foolish actions.

"A Friend In Deed" seems to teach kids "If someone doesn't want to be your friend, bug them until you find out why." Or alternatively: "Social trial and error can lead to friendship."

"The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" could be taken to teach the lesson that market competition is a good thing, because it was clear that, the way things were, the Apples were unable to serve the needs of the market. The Flim-Flams were definitely bad, but them introducing competition did force the Apples to innovate and make enough cider for all.

"Somepony to Watch Over Me": If your elder sibling doesn't trust your self-sufficiency to the point of hovering over you constantly, do something completely reckless and life-threatening. If you manage to survive while at least making some progress on your own, staying home alone will look like a cinch in comparison.

"Testing Testing 1, 2, 3" has one as well: Goofing off is okay as long as you can use it as an excuse to find quick and easy ways to prepare for tests.

Constant praise actually can stifle your artistic integrity and it's alright to take some criticism now and then. Just roll with the punches and adjust when you need to.

Your usual artistic style isn't always what the customer needs; try to think of the client's context. At the same time, you can's just assume the artist/contractor knows exactly what you want or need when placing a special order. Be specific!

The show in general is a goldmine of accidental innuendo, and it is hard to tell what is completely by accident and what might not be. YouTube users like kyrospawn and EpicGteGuy are known to take MLP:FIM clips out of context for a variety of purposes, but one of them is to highlight how sexual they seem out of context.

Same deal for screencaps; after any given episode airs, it's common to see tons of freeze frames that look really dirty out of context. Such as this or this. It really doesn't help that the blinking animation (which is used a lot), almost always looks like "bedroom eyes" when paused halfway through.

Rarity's shop includes bridles (one is even shown on Carousel Boutique's sign), as seen in various episodes (such as "Swarm of the Century", in which Twilight calls outfits incorporating them "gorgeous") and other official materials (such as Adventures in Ponyville, in which Rarity and Applejack wear them). Given that ponies don't even wear them while pulling carriages ("Over a Barrel", "The Best Night Ever", etc.), it makes you wonder just what they are supposed to be used for...

Rarity is lounging in a hot tub, with a look of sheer bliss on her face. Cue Pinkie rising out of the water in, um, questionable proximity to Rarity....

Alternatively: "I have located the water jet."

In the same episode, Twilight Sparkle's horn becomes floppy with blue dots on it. The way it flops around is reminiscent of, well... you get the picture. The way Spike stares at it on the verge of cracking up almost implies he's in on the joke.

In "Winter Wrap Up", due to where Spike is sitting during Twilight's first verse in the "Winter Wrap Up" song, it's easy to see how he might be doing something else entirely. The way he bounces while Twilight is walking along does not help.

A squicky example occurs in "Feeling Pinkie Keen" when ponies are running away from hydra, and Spike is seen sitting on Twilight's head right in the place where her horn should be, which is nowhere to be seen, and there's an expression of pain on his face. (Not to mention he's positioned there suspiciously firmly considering they were running uphill at high-speed.)

The end, in which Rainbow Dash flies off with two (male) members of the Wonderbolts and declares "... I've got plans!", could be taken as this.

That same episode also opens with Fluttershy recapping "the elements of a good cheer": "loss of control", "screaming and hollering", and "passion". Taken out of context, it kinda sounds like she and Rainbow Dash are talking about... something else. Not to mention that it's given out of context, with no explanation until afterwards.

A visual version happens in the "Over a Barrel" episode. In one scene Rainbow Dash's wings are folded but after Pinkie Pie comes out dressed as a showgirl, they are wide spread. Previous episodes showed that this sort of reaction from her (one moment they're folded and then next they're spread) is a sign of excitement. Considering Rainbow Dash has considerable amounts of Les Yay and is often thought of as be fans to be a Lesbian Jock, it's been thought she was... excited when Pinkie came out.

To get the Wonderbolts' attention Rainbow Dash catapults a male pony into the air and "saves" him from the fall by catching him on her back... and if you cut the last scene out of context, it suddenly starts looking completely different. It doesn't help that Rainbow's expression looks really dirty.

In "Lesson Zero", Twilight tries some armchair psychology on Rainbow Dash when she thinks Rainbow is angry at Applejack, and tells her "Oh, Rainbow Dash, you don't have to hide your feelings from me." TwiDash shippers took notice. It doesn't help that she delivered that particular line in this◊ pose. Some AppleDash fans also interpreted the scene as Twilight being a Shipper on Deck.

Rainbow Dash tells Twilight that her inability to understand the difference between "coolness", "awesomeness", and "radicalness" is why she would never qualify to be her pet. Errmmm...

Also, Rainbow Dash suggests that she wants a pet; Fluttershy acts a little...too excited to this response, to the point that her exhales of joy sound like orgasms. Not to mention that she tells Rainbow Dash that the animals will love her, and that they (Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy) will "be best friends forever and ever." See it in all it's creepy glory here!

The sounds of Amethyst Star opening a jar of peanut butter off-screen, can sound... different. Let's leave it there.

When Rainbow Dash pulls in Applejack for a photo opportunity, the positioning of the mouths and Applejack's reaction afterwards suggests something a bit more than being pulled into shot, which the fandom has noticed.

In "Family Appreciation Day", Filthy Rich is embarrassed by his first name simply because... well... it means "mucky" or "messy" after all but it isn't hard to think it also makes him sound like a porn star... especially when he just gets "Filthy".

Cherry Jubilee is styled like a "madam" of the Old West, and being "boss of Cherryhill Ranch" may give a few different visions of what actually goes down there. Not to mention she can always use "a pony with quick hooves and a strong back".

A Singin' in the Rain tribute in "Hearts and Hooves Day" wound up being mistaken by some for a pole-dancing joke. What made this particularly foul was that the tribute was done by Sweetie Belle, of all characters.

"A Friend in Deed": A cow that drinks milk would be like a grown woman that drinks breast milk.

Rainbow Dash: "I did tricks with that flag the likes of which no pony saw before."

The last time Miss Harshwhinny gives Rainbow Dash a dressing-down for her "over-enthusiastic outbursts", she literally gets up in Dash's face, appearing to kiss her on the muzzle. Slashfics in three...two...

Diamond Tiara referring to the CMC as going to be in "a hot mess".

While on the train, before going to comfort Scootaloo, Rainbow Dash says "I can't hold it in. I want you to win so bad!" with an extremely dirty expression on her face. This line and expression, when taken out of context, can make it seem like Rainbow wants to do something else with the Crusaders. Even in context it sounds rather perverted. It has gotten much lampshading on the popular imageboard Derpibooru.

In "Power Ponies", Applejack's alternate persona of Mistress Marevelous combined with her mastery of a psychically-controlled lasso can easily be seen as Fetish Fuel.

It only lasts for a few frames, but during the performance at the school Big Mac can be seen staring and sweatingnote More likely due to the fact he's having trouble keeping up with Fluttershy's ad libbing at Fluttershy while she's shaking her butt.

While this isn't the first time a mare has been pinned on her back in the show under another pony, the shot of Pinkie Pie over a sobbing Fluttershy could easily be interpreted very badly if viewed out of context.

When Party Favor makes his balloon binoculars and the balloon bridge, the shot shows him sitting down on his haunches, working his hooves feverishly in front of him to produce the final work. However, the shot cuts off just below his torso and the action in his hoofs just out of shot and blurred enough to make it look like he's working something else...

When Applejack gets her cutie mark back, the first thing she says is "Finally I can buck like a five-bit snake herder at an Appleloosa ranch house again!" It isn't immediately obvious to most viewers what bucking has to do with snake herding, or why a snake herder's services might be needed at a ranch house...

In "Slice of Life", Octavia and Vinyl make "beautiful music" together. This involves a lot of longing looks, Octavia undressing, and suggestive smiling between them. It's almost borderline G-Rated Sex.

"Griffon the Brush Off" and "Green Isn't Your Color" set us up to believe the aesops "a prank is only fun if everybody is laughing" and "don't be jealous" are coming. Twilight instead ends the episodes with "a bad friend will eventually make themselves known" and "be honest about your feelings." Both are decent aesops which fit their episodes and could also be a subversion or double subversion of stock aesops.

"The Mysterious Mare Do Well" could be said to not only preach "You shouldn't let glory go to your head and turn you into a braggart", but also "Fame is fleeting", based on how quick the ponies of Ponyville were to celebrate Mare Do Well and almost completely ignore Rainbow Dash. And given that Mare-Do-Well is actually four of the other members of the Mane Six, who manage to accomplish more than Rainbow Dash could alone, it teaches a lesson about the Power of Teamwork.

A different Aesop that can be taken from the episode "Hearts and Hooves Day" than the one given at the end can be taken as "You don't NEED a 'very special somepony' to be happy, even on a day dedicated to having one."

Ass Pull: Twilight becoming an Alicorn could have worked, but the final thing she did, to become worthy, was creating new magic, when that was never brought up before as being such a big deal. This gets really grating when the writers online said this episode was written a year before it was made, so no opportunity was taken for Foreshadowing in the rest of the season.

Inverted in what fans have dubbed "Derpygate", where the creators of the show changed the voice acting in a scene in "The Last Roundup" where beloved background pony Derpy Hooves is given spoken lines. A small group of parents protested this scene, finding it offensive (the name "Derpy" and the voice acting, which was a misunderstanding where the VA thought the character was male). The studio took the original episode off of iTunes and replaced it with one where Derpy's voice was changed and her name was not mentioned. This was the point where the fandom revolted, leading to quiteafewwebpages calling for the scene to be changed back. Eventually, the creators apologized to both sides. After being absent for most of Season Three, Derpy was finally re-inserted during the season finale. The Powers That Be later said that Derpy's disappearance for most of season three was done to make her triumphant return in "Rainbow Falls" more triumphant.

A lot of the fanbase wasn't happy with how Season 3 portrayed Spike as being quite incompetent (in "Spike at Your Service" he causes massive damage whenever he tries to help, and in "Just for Sidekicks" he screws up pet-sitting so badly that he ends up on a train in another country). As a result, the season 4 episode "Power Ponies" is pretty much based on the premise that Spike is helpful and the rest of the cast don't view him as The Load.

"One Bad Apple" got some criticism that Babs being bullied herself wasn't enough of an excuse for how big a jerk she was to the CMC. But in "Rarity Takes Manehattan" we get confirmation of just how much worse bullying can be in Manehattan, while keeping in tone to its In-Real-Life counterpart.

A number of fans were angry that Spike wasn't invited back to the Crystal Empire in "Games Ponies Play", even though he was the one who saved it. "Equestria Games" reveals that Spike is considered a hero throughout the entire kingdom. It also gives him a lot of appreciation, something that, according to the fans, almost every Spike centered episode — including Equestria Girls — after the Season 3 Premiere seriously lacked.

For those opposed to Twilight becoming an alicorn princess, a commonly cited argument was that it felt like the show was putting Twilight above her friends, which they felt not only seemed like favouritism from the writers, but went against the show's defining theme of friendship. The revelation in "Twilight's Kingdom - Part 2" that Twilight's friends including Spike will apparently be ruling alongside her in her role as the Princess of Friendship may be an attempt to address this.

For those who were rubbed the wrong way by the seasonpremiere's and "Magical Mystery Cure"'s implications of Cutie Marks, Luna affirming that a Cutie Mark is simply a representation of who a pony truly is (as opposed to simply their power or destiny) in "Bloom & Gloom" can come as this.

Troubleshoes from "Appleoosa's Most Wanted" isn't the first pony to be characterized as a klutz. Interpreting his klutziness as a talent seems to be an attempt at making a certain gray/blond pegasus mare look more acceptable to viewers who took offense to her initial characterization.

Bon Bon/Sweetie Drops being an undercover secret agent provides an explanation for why her voice has been different in subsequent speaking roles — she'd have experience adopting different voices as part of a disguise. Also, while she was called Bon Bon for some time, the loss of the trademark means that for a while now, her merchandise has been sold under the name "Sweetie Drops." This episode canonizes both names.

You can really feel everyone involved trying not to make a repeat of Derpygate. She has a more feminine voice that fits her personality better than Tabitha's initial Saving Throw, she's a more relatable screw-up than the Walking Disaster Area she was before, and she has a lazy eye problem rather than either being permanently "derped" or normal.

The inconsistent depictions of background ponies living in both Canterlot and Ponyville, at least with regards to Minuette, Twinkleshine, Lemon Hearts, and Lyra Heartstrings, is given a convenient Hand Wave in "Amending Fences". Lyra apparently moved from Canterlot to Ponyville around the same time as Twilight, and the three who stayed in Canterlot come to visit her, and she visits them in Canterlot, too. This same explanation could be extrapolated to account for most any background character that appears in multiple towns — they visit friends living there.

For those who felt the Nightmare Forces from the comics devalued Luna's being The Atoner, this episode qualifies, given the Tantabus is the literal embodiment of her guilt.

Also, fans have long wanted to see the God Emperor princesses cut loose, but anytime something that would require the level of power we expect from those who control the sun and moon — and hear of them having used in the distant past — shows up, they end up suffering The Worf Effect, or never acting beyond exposition duty at all. Not today, as we truly get to see Luna take action, showing herself quite powerful though not without limits. One sequence was much like fans have discussed wishing had happened at times like "A Canterlot Wedding"; a role that lets the Princesses not seem so useless by holding down the fort in one way while still needing the Mane Six. In this case, Luna's mindlinking the entire city, which limits, but doesn't fully eliminate, her ability to act directly.

In "Boast Busters", Rainbow Dash, Applejack and Rarity comment on Trixie showing off when she first performs for Ponyville. After Rainbow Dash heckles her, the three then accept Trixie's challenge and show off their own talents in the process.

Many consider the entire Mane Six to be this in "The Mysterious Mare Do Well". Rainbow Dash was being portrayed as a hero with too much ego. The other Mane Five's response was seen by many fans as just as bad as how Rainbow Dash acted. They saved ponies just to make Rainbow Dash look bad, got all of Ponyville pissed at her (though partially her fault), and put Rainbow Dash into a depression.

Pinkie Pie in A Friend In Deed. Her antics against Cranky Doodle Donkey really made her come off a selfish jerk out to fill her quota rather than the Innocently Insensitive character she is usually portrayed as. The Family-Unfriendly Aesop, Pinkie not getting called out or facing any real reprocussions and theresolution definitely didn't help matters either. Because of this, viewers found it very difficult to feel happy for Pinkie and Cranky Doodle Donkey definitely came out as the more sympathetic character to many.

This is later acknowledged in "Magic Duel" when Trixie not only calls out the town on this but also points out she lost everything thanks to what happened in Ponyville. Ironically, she ends up as the Big Bad for that episode, having obtained - against the shopkeeper's own advice - the magic mind-control amulet for revenge in the first place. Even the others admit she wasn't that bad beforehand.

"One Bad Apple": It's not okay to stand up to a bully, no matter how much they push you around and no matter how badly they've been bullied themselves. It just makes you even worse than them.

"Maud Pie": trying to put too much pressure on your friends to bond with each other will lead to a literal near-death experience.

In "Green Isn't Your Color", Rarity confesses to Twilight that she is horribly jealous of Fluttershy's success as a supermodel, while Fluttershy herself later confesses to Twilight that she hates being a model and she's only doing this because Rarity told her she wanted her to. However, Twilight is tongue-tied because she promised both of them not to tell anyone. Instead of having her get the two of them in a room together and telling them the truth to stop both of them from being miserable, however, Twilight instead tries to help Fluttershy ruin her reputation as a model — only for Rarity, under the impression that Fluttershy liked modelling, to try and save it. The moral of the story is "Being able to keep a secret is important, but you should never be afraid to share your feelings with a friend", but it comes across more as "Even if you know people are hurting because of the secrets you keep, you shouldn't tell the truth and instead hope things will resolve themselves".

In the pilot episode, Twilight says "All the ponies in this town are CRAZY!" By the end of the season, every mane character has suffered a nervous breakdown at some point. And then in the season 2 episode "Lesson Zero", Twilight goes completely (if temporarily) over the edge.

Seven months after "Hurricane Fluttershy" aired, most of the United States' Mid-Atlantic region was devastated by Superstorm Sandy.

The whole Scootaloo/flightless bird jokes from within the show and fandom become less funny, if they aren't to some already, now that the S4 episode "Flight to the Finish" has Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon making fun of Scootaloo for not being able to fly.

Look at the chalkboard in the beginning of "Call of the Cutie". These kids are learning damn astrophysics! Or at least physicsnote based on the magnetic permeability symbol and vector calculusnote Based on the gradient sign.

Gilda's maltreatment of the ponies actually borders on Fridge Brilliance when you realize that in mythology, griffons and horses were mortal enemies.

Rarity (albeit accidentally) re-enacts the Greek myth of Icarus at the Young Flyer's Competition.

At the end of the second episode (part two of the pilot), "The Elements of Harmony": two foals lay a wreath of red and white roses around Princess Luna's neck. This might seem like a conventional way of honoring and welcoming a princess, but consider that, at the end of the War of the Roses, Henry VII took as his symbol a red and white rose, combining the Lancastrian red rose and the Yorkist white rose. So red and white roses together are a symbol of reconciliation following a civil war within a royal family for control of the kingdom, or principality in this case.

They are also, in Greek mythology, a symbol of DISCORD... one golden apple in particular led to the Trojan wars, and the sacking of Troy — and the death of a dozen or so legendary Greek heroes.

The Apple(s) of Discord return in the second season's first episode, where they are used to sow discord among the mane six, fittingly, right at the start of the challenge.

Twilight's mentioned Star Swirl the Bearded created an "amniomorphic spell". "Amnio-" as a medical term deals with the fetus, so "amniomorphic" potentially deals with the development of babies, which is essentially what Twilight did when she hatched Spike.

Actually, it's highly possible that the spell's name refers to "lamb-shape". Which would make Star Swirl the inventor of a spell that turns ponies into sheep.

Some claim that amniomorphic is actually a subtle joke. Amnio could be translated to bowl. That would make Star Swirl the Bearded a hairy potter.

Also in "Luna Eclipsed", Luna keeps using old-fashioned, "formal" versions of the second-person personal pronoun: thou, thee, thy, thine, etc., even though she supposedly wants (much like her sister, in a way) a closer, warmer relationship with her subjects. But actually, thou, thee, thy, and so forth are actually the informal, personal versions of the second-person personal pronoun, much like "tu" in French or Spanish, or "du" in German. You, your, and so forth are the formal forms. When Luna addresses the other ponies as "thou," she's basically saying that she considers them to be close friends.

This makes sense if you consider that she has been trapped in isolation for a thousand years. Thou, thee, thy and thine are Early Modernnote read "Shakespearian" English, which was still in use a thousand years ago.

Which is also why she would not know the meaning of the word fun (in this case amusement) which in the real world has only had that meaning since the 1700s.

Both Princesses wear collars. Celestia, who wears the larger collar, is older, more mature, and more experienced... and has bourne (and still bears) most of the burden of ruling Equestria. Luna, whose collar is much smaller, is the younger, less mature, and more impulsive sister... and is still adjusting to 1000 years' worth of progress. Factor in the purpose and benefits of the real-world horse collar harness, and decide for yourself if the symbolism was intentional or not.

If you have any interest in color theory, Celestia's mane might be of great interest to you. Sky Blue is the main color, and one of the stripes bears a shade of cyan called Celeste. The third color present is Orchid, a shade of magenta. Why Orchid? Because the orchid is one of the flowers representing the Chinese Four Gentlemen. It symbolizes spring, the season in which the sun warms the earth so life can continue.

In "It's About Time", Twilight is seen looking over a chalkboard covered in equations, which are apparently real equations for the effects of time dilation.

Oh, how is this for genius: in "A Canterlot Wedding - Part 1", during the song "B.B.B.F.F", there is actually a double meaning (which Daniel Ingram has confirmed):

The song is in the key of Db Major (just like "Winter Wrap Up"!) . That means that the root chord is a Db major chord. Usually, a Ab major chord will lead into a Db major. This is the V-I chord progression and it is also known as the Authentic Cadence (stick with me here). Now, it seems to resolve to a sadder chord at the end of the phrase. Instead of ending on Db major around 1:16, it lands on Bb minor: the relative minor of Db major. Now, when a chord progression seems to be heading to the root chord but lands on the relative minor instead, that is called a...

Also worth noting, listen to how Twilight sings the last "forever" in the song. Her little cadenza (I am seriously not making these words up) quotes the opening notes of the theme song.

Daring Do's grey-scale tail and mane (at least as imagined by Rainbow Dash) incorporate the "colours" of a rare phenomenon known as a moonbow.

Glurge: While the show does seem to make a rather commendable effort to avoid this trope a lot of the time, it sometimes can't resist falling into it due to its cutesy nature and sometimes easily re-enterpretable Aesops. Faust has even admitted to some stories.

Considering the episode was produced long before Cupcakes was written, Pinkie Pie's psychotic break in "Party of One" is rather eerie, doubly so considering Rainbow Dash is the pony to visit her during her episode.

The entire story presented in "Hearth's Warming Eve" becomes really creepy for those who are familiar with the mythology surrounding Wendigos.

In the Canterlot Wedding two-parter, the need for increased security at the wedding seems a bit more eerie in light of the issues with insufficient security at the London 2012 Olympics. Keep in mind that the Canterlot Wedding was based off the Royal Wedding between William and Kate... Which also happened in London.

Rainbow Dash's attitude towards Fluttershy in "Dragonshy" seems out of place compared to future episodes such as "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" and "Hurricane Fluttershy".

In "It's about Time", Twilight is repeatedly concerned about a possible disaster in the future. As we find out much later on, a disaster was brewing ever since Cerberus temporarily left Tartarus.

In "Fall Weather Friends", Rainbow Dash uses her ability to fly to cheat in various events. Until Applejack points it out, none of the ponies think it unfair, and neither do they bother rerunning the events she cheated in. Let's face it, when even Twilight Sparkle doesn't object to Dash LIFTING APPLEJACK INTO THE AIR DURING A TUG OF WAR, this trope is definitely in play.

In "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000", the Flim Flam brothers are either holding the Conflict Ball or the Villain Ball, but either way a lot of what they do triggers one of these. If either of them had possessed an ounce of business sense, or at least hadn't been so arrogant during the contest, the episode would have been much shorter.

The plot of "Games Ponies Play" relies on the cast not realizing that the pony they greeted at the train station wasn't the games Inspector. It's an understandable mistake at first, as they're in a rush, but as the episode goes on they grow increasingly more oblivious to the fact that the pony they're escorting around doesn't resemble the inspector at all, as well as the fact that despite spending the entire afternoon with her, no-one ever thinks to refer to her by name. If any of them had thought to ask her name (or if the pony in question had thought to introduce herself), the mistake would have been caught within five minutes. Also, the problem could have been completely avoided in the first place if the Mane Six had been given a description of the games inspector's cutie mark (they had instead been told to look for a pony with flower-print luggage).

Princess Luna became Nightmare Moon, Nightmare Moon was defeated and turned back into Luna. There are toys of her and she came back in one episode of Season 2 (she even gets mentioned in the Season 2 première). The reveal at the end of the second episode isn't much of a spoiler anymore.

The Season 3 finale, namely the ending where Twilight becomes a princess has been widely and openly discussed long before the relevant episode's airdate.

The Season 4 finale where Lord Tirek destroys Golden Oaks Library now that Twilight has been living in her own castle since the start of Season 5.

Less Disturbing in Context: Fluttershy's song from "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" includes the lines "Oh, what a magical place!/And I owe it all to the Pegasus race!" If heard out of context and without the accompanying visuals it may sound like Fluttershy is propagating Pegasus supremacy. It doesn't help that the mentions of wild animals, bees, and trees might be mistaken for a reference to "Tomorrow Belongs to Me"...

Nightmare Fuel coupled with Fridge Logic: Many of the situations in the series, although portrayed as saccharine, in reality would be nightmare fuel. Some examples that come to mind are the mind rape of the Mane Six by Discord (as well as implied with everypony in Equestria), or the Nightmare Moon arc's threat of eternal night.

Paranoia Fuel: Anypony you see on the screen may be a changeling. Any one at any given time. Much worse in-universe. There's a joke about the repeated background ponies.

Rewatch Bonus: After seeing Twilight become a Princess, watching the all the previous episodes gain a new perspective on how effectively Princess Celestia was able to prepare her for that role ever since she first showed up at Celestia's school.

Seasonal Rot: While My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is still popular, Season 3 was generally not as well-received as the prior two. Since it was only half the length of an average season, its problem episodes — which, naturally, vary depending on who you ask — tend to stick out more. Almost a full third of the episodes therein have been a point of contention for at least some fans.

The entire point of "Bridle Gossip" about not judging a book by its cover is very important considering how prevalent people are immediately judged or stereotyped for their outward appearances, even if they are good people inside.

Also the entire point of "One Bad Apple", considering that bullying is on a monumental rise in this day and age.

Some fans also felt this way about "The Best Night Ever", while others thought the episode was So Cool Its Awesome. Amusingly enough, part of the lesson for that episode was not getting your expectations up too high.

The Canterlot Elite in "Sweet and Elite" are depicted as smug elitists for treating the ponies from Ponyville as boorish hicks. In addition to the Mane Cast's disruptive behavior at the Grand Galloping Gala (the highest profile national annual party), Rarity's friends crash and trash the Canterlot Garden Party (the second highest profile national annual party), making one wonder if the reputation for being boorish hicks is at least somewhat deserved. Indeed, for the Gala, Celestia deliberately invited the main characters in hopes of "livening up" the party, and afterwards claims it was the best one in a long time BECAUSE the party ended in a disaster because of their antics.

Similarly, in "Bridle Gossip" the viewer is supposed to find the cast's suspicions of Zecora to be unfounded and based on misconceptions. The problem is that while they go a bit overboard, their suspicion isn't entirely unfounded as 1) Zecora lives in a forest that's infamous for being full of dangerous creatures, 2) Zecora is a zebra, a species that none of the cast members have ever seen before and have no frame of reference for, 3) Later episodes confirm that there are all sorts of dangerous creatures and persons in the setting, 4) Zecora's behavior doesn't exactly help her case; she shows up wearing a cloak with Glowing Eyes of Doom and when she comes around she just sort of walks around aimlessly rather than making any attempt to communicate. In light of that, it isn't really that odd that the townfolk are a bit wary of her. It's especially true in AJ's case; it's not exactly surprising that she'd want to keep her little sister from following a stranger into a dangerous forest.

In "Bats!", Applejack is treated as being in the wrong for wanting to oust the vampire fruit bats entirely rather than coming to a compromise. However, anyone who's ever worked on a farm knows that pests can utterly ruin a crop, and as Sweet Apple Acres is generally treated as being a bit unstable financially, Applejack's concerns about the bats being a threat to her livelihood are completely valid. It's compounded by the fact that an infestation had happened in the past, and the farm had barely survived.

Spike's Heroic Self-Deprecation in "Equestria Games" is perfectly justified. His little anthem shtick was probably extremely offensive towards anyone from Cloudsdale (they were not entertained: they didn't laugh, and, judging by the audience's reactions, they seemed furious), while the heroic actions he can take credit for basically amount to being in the right place at the right time — any other pony would have probably done the same. Other ponies trying to chalk it up to him senselessly being self-conscious, outright ignoring how he humiliated himself in front of thousands of spectators (along with how long it took him to light the torch, followed by his embarrassing failure to light the picture he signed on fire) is somewhat bewildering.

Any time Pinkie Pie starts singing. Thankfully, her songs are presented in an ironic fashion; breaking into song impromptu is one of Pinkie Pie's personality quirks in-universe. The rest of the cast reacts appropriately ("Tell me she's not..." "She is."). Thus, instead of being the Narm that one might expect from this franchise, this subtle Fourth Wall lampshading allows the Periphery Demographic to feel at ease watching the show.

You think Pinkie Pie's songs are that? When Fluttershy sings, it's the equivalent of syrup flooding the room!

In general, watching this show has been known to cause cavities. Try as it might, the show still cannot resist being cute and adorable.

The fact that the six main ponies have had nervous breakdowns tends to lessen the sweetness.

The whole show could be considered a huge subversion/aversion (compared to expectations), which is why it has the popularity and fanbase that it does.

Some people think it's okay. That said, some people do feel a need to turn down the volume when someone's in the room for the theme song (although the sound for it being balanced louder than the rest of the show might have something to do with that).

When the "Teens React" show used the intro, the reaction from both the teens and the bronies responding to that was fairly predictable.

The ending to "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" was even further on the sweet side than usual for this show, but well-written enough for come off as a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming. It didn't stop Scootaloo and Spike from Lamp Shading how sappy it was, though.

Spike: Gross! When did you get so cheesy?

Some have noted that "Baby Cakes" is this trope, at least, up until the Nightmare Fuel-inducing sequence when Pinkie loses the babies.

They Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste: Much of Season 4 was met with complaints that Twilight being a princess barely seemed to have any impact on the show, so fans questioned why the quite controversial development was done in the first place. This paid off in the season finale, where Twilight herself seriously questions why she was made a princess, and the true answer is revealed.

In Dragon Quest Spike wants to learn about dragons during "The Great Dragon Migration". Good, but then the plot goes into him being picked on teenaged dragons, earning their respect and then finding out they're just mean bastards. It could have been better spent building a mythology of the place of dragons in Equestria and add in that the bullying subplot could have just been easily done with stallions in Ponyville.

An episode about Rainbow Dash breaking her wing? That's an amazing idea! Think of the drama she would go through, wondering when she would fly again, being forced to live the life of an Earth pony until it heals... or it could be about her getting addicted to reading. Uh, sure, that might work too, I guess.

The premiere of Season 3could have beenawesome. It concerns the return of a long forgotten empire, the coming of an ancient evil ruler and Twilight and friends tasked to help save the empire alongside Shining Armor and Princess Cadance. Too bad that the entire two-parter kept its focus on almost everything but said ruler, who had fewer lines than certain background characters and very little screentime. Plus, the Aesop for the episode certainly didn't warrant a two-part special.

The Season 3 finale too. Just imagine all the great material that could be derived from the characters' lives being swapped around, and then sigh because we only get to see it for a few minutes before Twilight figures out how to fix the situation.

The Season 4 arc involving the Equestria Games missed a great opportunity, with no related episodes airing during the real-world Olympics.

Equestria Games: The synopsis and subsequent airing of this episode has led to complaints of the Equestria Games arc culminating in a Spike episode rather than putting the focus on the games themselves. Ironically, considering that the complaints to the first episode of the Games arc were that Spike wasn't getting enough focus in the form of him not being invited back to the Crystal Empire.

Considering the tourist mustang's speed and stamina in Games Ponies Play - not to mention the fact that Shining Armor was training a Crystal Empire team on a steeplechase course - it's a shame that no hoof races were shown.

Values Dissonance: The Japanese dub completely changed "Griffon the Brush Off"'s aesop from "rather than try to influence who your friends spend time with, you yourself should try to be a good friend, and trust that the true face of a false friend will eventually be revealed through their behavior" to "if someone's being mean, don't retaliate." However, both these lessons are useful and can actually work hand in hand: jumping the gun and retaliating immediately will only get in the way of the truth revealing itself.

The Japanese dub also toned down Rainbow Dash's arrogant behavior, especially in "Boast Busters", where the moral is to not to be arrogant. This is because arrogance is viewed especially negatively in Japan, and if one of the heroes were to be shown to be too prideful in their abilities, then this could cast them in bad light.

Season 4 has been accused of this, due to references to internet memes from a pony with a Grumpy Cat cutie mark in "Rarity Takes Manehattan" to a ponified Slender Man appearing in the background of "Pinkie Apple Pie". note It turns out Meghan McCarthy, the writer of the latter episode, hadn't even heard of the Slender Man meme, meaning that this was just a gag snuck in by a random animator.

Pinkie Pie's rap number in "Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3" appears to be a parody of this trope.

Discord was stuck as a stone statue twice, once for well over a millennium, and fully conscious both times. Once freed, he seems completely unfazed by the experience, even mentioning his boredom and loneliness off-handedly.

Luna/Nightmare Moon is in a similar situation, having been sealed in the moon for a thousand years. Yet her sanity seems unaffected. The comic book tie-in implies that she had company during her imprisonment, but it's unclear whether this is canon.

Rainbow Dash proudly proclaims she's the best flyer in Equestria and often treats herself like a Memetic Badass. Thing is, she's right, and the fans certainly concur with the second part.

Trixie is commonly depicted in fandom as Twilight's Worthy Opponent who is her equal in magical talent but lacks the training and/or dedication to be as good with it as her. A far cry from the show, where her hammy boasts are admitted by her to prop up her ego because her magic is really just stage effects and parlor tricks.

Badass Decay: Shining Armor is the biggest offender. He starts out as the Captain of the Royal Guard in Canterlot so you'd expect him to be a capable fighter. Unfortunately, he's always beaten easily by the Big Bad and utterly useless to the main characters. It's actually gotten to the point where he cries at least once an appearance in later episodes.

Pinkie Pie and Kirby, mainly because they are both pink heroes with huge appetites and also inflate there bodies at certain points (Kirby to fly, and Pinkie Pie during some of her random cartoon physics most noticeable during her Pinkie Sense when she found out that Twilight believing in her abilities was the doozy she predicted). They also have had trouble with dealing with bird-based characters (King Dedede for Kirby and Gilda for Pinkie) so these characters do have a lot in common.

Pinkie gets a lot of comparison to Deadpool as well. Both characters are Fun PersonifiedMotor Mouths with a tendency to act completely random. Both characters also have Medium Awareness, but despite what the fandom says, Pinkie's is to a much, much lesser extent than Deapool's. The comparison was only strengthened when Pinkie rambled about "chimi-cherry-changas" (chimichangas are Deadpool's favorite food).

Rarity and Rouge the Bat. This one's easy to figure out. Both of them are Proud Beauties who are white with blue eyeshadow, can handle themselves well in a fight, and have younger males attracted to them (Spike for Rarity, and Knuckles for Rouge), while both being obsessed with jewels and have no problem using their feminine wiles to get what they want. Hey, in "Sonic Rainboom" Rarity even has wings, lipstick, and nearly falls to her doom much like Rouge does in Sonic Adventure 2, stressing this comparison even more.

Princess Celestia shares more than one similarity with The Doctor: they both lived an undefined long time, they both have a backstory enveloped in absolute mystery, they both had a particular event that changed their life and it's treated like their biggest failure (the banishment of her sister Luna/NMM for her, the Time War for him) and they both have cheerful personality hidden inside their aura of professionalism... oh, and they both have shades of a Guile Hero and are both very protective in regard of their subordinates/companions.

Same can be said of Celestia sharing some similarities to Optimus Prime.

A few members of the fandom have compared Pinkie Pie to The Master pointing how both experienced an event in their childhood (staring into the Untempered Schism for The Master and witnessing the Sonic Rainboom for Pinkie Pie) that had a major effect in their lives (The Master went mad from the drumming in his head and Pinkie became insanely cheerful after getting her cutie mark). Both characters have a bizarre sense of humor, both characters are considered woobies by the fandom, and both characters have created mass duplicates of themselves at one point (Pinkie wanted a way to spend time with all of her friends and The Master wanted an army to take over the universe). Likewise, both characters have Hidden Depths to them having tragic aspects to them that are hidden by their hammy personalities.

Both Celestia and Luna can be compared to Thor and Loki. Celestia/Luna are both essentially goddesses much like how Thor/Loki are both gods. Both pairs shared a close sibling relationship until jealously caused the younger sibling to turn evil (Loki wanted to take over Asgard and Luna became Nightmare Moon). Likewise, Celestia tries to reconcile with Luna much like how Thor tries to reconcile with Loki.

Less common than the two above, and back to Sonic, she's been likened to Tails, for being a genius and the smartest of the group.

She's also been likened to Blaze, because of their similar attitudes. (Didn't care about friends, obsessed with pursuing their goals at first, discover The Powerof Friendship and change their minds.)

Add to that spin off media character Sally Acorn (precocious bookworm, Deadpan Snarker, prone to pompous neuroses or insecurity issues, meticulous and more lucid opposite to Sonic counterpart). This was only punctuated when Twilight ascended to princess status.

Rainbow Dash has been compared to Black Star. Both being loud boisterous members of their team who tend to have large egos. Likewise, both are best friends with a quiet meek female character (IE: Fluttershy and Tsubaki) as well as an odd friendship with a more serious-minded character (IE: Twilight Sparkle and Death The Kid) And, both characters are loyal to their friends and are willing to risk their lives to help them in times of danger.

Fluttershy's Shrinking Violet and Moe characteristic have led to comparisons between her and Hinata, especially by shippers that ship Hinata and Naruto along with Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash.

These said traits, along with her tendency to Take a Level in Badass in order to help her friends (just to name a few similarities) also leads to Fluttershy being compared to Nodoka Miyazaki.

Adding to the Soul Eater comparisons, Fluttershy is often compared to Crona. Both are shy, pink-haired woobies who love animals and have hidden dark sides.

Fans dislikeAngel Bunny, Fluttershy's pet for being a Spoiled Brat and often demonize him in fanfictions and webcomics, yet whitewash Discord, who mindraped Fluttershy and turned her into a bitch, yet fans treat Discord like a saint compared to Angel Bunny (and Gilda). Note that much of this took place before his Heel-Face Turn.

Fans demonize characters like Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, Suri, Angel Bunny, and Gilda for their menial deeds, yet whitewash villains such as Sombra, Nightmare Moon, Chrysalis, and Discord, who are supposed to be worse than the jerks and bullies. Even after fans are called out on their hypocrisy, they ignore it.

Gilda has her share of fans. This may actually be semi-justified, as Gilda had done the least amount of antagonistic behavior out of all the antagonists in the show so far.

The Great and Powerful Trixie is even more likely to score Jerkass Woobie points with the audience. Given that she lost her home when the Ursa Minor destroyed her traveling cart, this actually has some merit. Now, though, this trope doesn't apply to Trixie anymore, given that she's made a Heel-Face Turn.

Some fans wish Nightmare Moon never transformed back to Princess Luna, though Luna herself has sympathy of her own from the fans.

Her minions, the changelings, also get this treatment. However, this is more justified, as they appear to bear little ill will and just want to feed.

Prince Blueblood also receives sympathy from fans. They claim that he was "seen in the wrong by fans" for expecting chivalry from Rarity and that Rarity was just a gold-digger that Blue Blood was trying to shake off, forgetting the fact that he's a rude, narcissistic, stuck-up, selfish, and spoiled jerkass who insulted Applejack's food and used Rarity as a pony shield to protect himself from flying cake, and not apologizing for his actions after Rarity called him out on his behavior. His defenders might exist due to backlash against the people who outright wanted to murder him for his rude behavior.

If Nico Nico comments on Japanese fansubs are anything to go by, Gilda is more sympathetic to Japanese audiences and Trixie less so. However, twopolls held by one of the fansubbers placed Trixie over Gilda.

To the Japanese fandom, Fluttershy, Big Mac, Cheerilee, and Applejack are the top four most popular ponies. Fluttershy has been regarded as an "Honorary Japanese" because of her personality and as the most triumphant Western example of the Moe Archetype, Big Mac is usually known by the honorific "Aniki" ("Big Brother"), Cheerilee is greatly respected for her teaching skills (earning her the nickname "Cheerilee-Sensei"), and Applejack, due to her honesty and simple humility, is more popular in Japan than in the West.

Another poll taken in Laketown shows that Japanese children were very fond of Pinkie Pie (of course, Pinkie is extremely popular as a character worldwide). A translation of the Bushiroad conference even shows that the Japanese marketers think that Pinkie seems more fitting as a main protagonist than Twilight Sparkle.

Rainbow Dash is also surprisingly one of the more popular characters in Japan, thanks in part to fans being impressed by Izumi Kitta's boyish voice.

Jerkass Woobie: The large majority of time in the Slice of Life stories however, said character brings it upon themselves out of arrogance or stubborn refusal to get out of an often easily escapable scenario and are handed An Aesop at the end of it all.

Luna, with the emphasis on "jerkass" in season 1's first two episodes, and the emphasis on "woobie" in "Luna Eclipsed", wherein she just wants to be admired yet everypony else is running away from her.

Trixie is also often seen in this light, mainly because she loses her home after her debut episode.

Twilight Sparkle herself usually has plenty of legitimate reasons to be upset about her problems. However, her Super OCD-ness and inferior complex gets the better of her, causing her to make her own problems worse more than better.

Rainbow Dash in some of her lower points. To some extent, all the mane cast have moments in the spotlight that involve them acting arrogant or reckless, and paying a heavy price for it a couple of times.

Discord, as of "Keep Calm and Flutter On" and especially in "Twilight's Kingdom". The poor guy betrayed his best friend and regretted his action.

Discord is one sly trolling bastard in his two-part episode. Made even better in "Keep Calm and Flutter On". As manipulative as he was in the Season 2 premiere, he was still backed by omnipotent magic, which means he had a distinct advantage over the Mane Six (as they started out without their Elements). In "Keep Calm and Flutter On", however, they do have their Elements, he cannot do anything about that, and they are ready to blast him back to stone at a moment's notice. Faced with this disadvantage, Discord has no choice but to really start using his wits to gain the upper hand. Does he succeed? Let's put it that way: just about the only thing that stands between him and total domination of Equestria is... himself. As of Season 4, a backup plan he made 1000 years ago has successfully forced the girls into giving up their Elements of Harmony. In other words, only his own friendship with Fluttershy stands between him and Equestria plunged in chaos. We should really be glad for that Heel-Face Turn....

King Sombra in his two-part episode was certainly one in the past, at least, due to his Crazy-Prepared, Dangerously Genre Savvy measures when hiding the Crystal Heart during his rule over the Crystal Empire. His returns cost him some of his splendor, but he's still a terrifying No-Nonsense Nemesis.

Queen Chrysalis is also a cunning foe herself, successfully fooling everyone including Celestia. She intentionally invokes Cassandra Truth. Only ever acting Out of Character when Twilight is around, and making sure to get on Twilight's friends' good side whenever she's absent. Not only that, her "Out of Character" moments are so subtle In-Universe that only Twilight would notice. And she makes sure to have the excuse of "wedding stress" to fall back on in case anyone else calls her out. This serves to successfully paint Twilight as paranoid and jealous. Isolating her from her friends and potentially rendering The Elements of Harmony (AKA The Ponies "Fix All The Things" button) useless since they need all SIX bearers to function. She even let's Twilight see her brainwashing Shining Armour knowing that this will cause Twilight to freak out and give Chrysalis even more ammo to paint Twilight as rude and paranoid. And if that didn't work, she had the backup plan of sending a part of her army to fight the Bearers while the rest of her army secures the Elements themselves Another obstacle to usurpation that Chrysalis surpassed was Shining Armour and his shield spell, which could conveniently block all threats out of Canterlot. This was a spell that neither Luna, nor Celestia could accomplish. How do you overcome such an obstacle? Oh I dunno, how about impersonating his fiancé and sucking all his energy away? Keep your enemies close after all. not only that, she's also Genre Savvy enough to intentionally invoke Evil Gloating to buy her army enough time to break through Shining Armour's shield spell. Chrysalis's plan was almost perfect, taking out her biggest threats from most to least.

Lord Tirek is certainly one. He patiently manipulates Discord, a Magnificent Bastard in his own right, like a fiddle, and manages to successfully drain every pony in Equestria of their magic, including the Princesses and the Mane Six. He's also very good at playing Xanatos Speed Chess, catching up to current events and playing them in his favor. If it hadn't been for Discord's key, Tirek would have been unstoppable.

PinkiePie, rather than just being a hyperactive party pony is often portrayed by Fanon as an omnipotent Haruhi-scale Reality Warper surpassing the Princesses and even Discord due to the frequency where she violates numerous laws within the universe through Cartoon Physics.

"The Great and Powerful" Trixie is one. In show, she's displayed as being somewhat talented, but not that impressive in terms of power. The fandom likes to think of her as a worthy rival to Twilight who is equal in terms of power.

With the advent of "Lesson Zero", Twilight Sparkle of all ponies now bears this title. The fact that next episode she used candy to lure Pinkie Pie into a dark alley, then pins Pinkie down and makes her promise not to scream hasn't helped.

Discord has also gotten a bit of this, mainly due to his No Sense of Personal Space with Twilight Sparkle, especially the scene were he runs his paw across her cheek. The Pony POV Series implied that his brainwashing of Fluttershy, the only one he could never break, is similar to Rape Of course, unlike the previous examples, Discord is actually evil and nasty enough for this to have at least some degree of validity.

Queen Chrysalis is quickly gaining steam as a canon example of this. On top of essentially being a G-rated succubus, she, like Discord, has No Sense of Personal Space, placing her hoof on Twilight's chin◊ (what's with villains and touching Twilight's face?) and getting really close to Shining Armor (as both fake Cadance and in her true form!).

The plunder vines from the premiere of season four were shown to be very grabby. The fandom promptly went to the obvious place with them.

Ten episodes later came the Tatzlwurm and its three (also very grabby) tentacle-tongues. There's an excellent chance that it reached this status the very second that it opened its mouth.

And many Human-in-Equestria fanfiction (especially The Conversion Bureau) often portrays Celestia as a Pony-supremacist who will either convert or exterminate the "lower" human life forms, and a major opponent of Human democracy.

Big Macintosh got some of this after Sweet Apple Massacre.

Lesson Zero, where Twilight, if deprived of lessons to submit, turns into a deranged psycho.

Fluttershy gets turned into a Yandere after her famous scream at the animals in the Gala: "You're going to LOVE ME!"

Memetic Troll: There is a reason one of Celestia's nicknames is "Trollestia". Her character in the actual series is a benevolent ruler and a Reasonable Authority Figure, but it's very frequent amongst fans to portray her as a Caligula who banishes her subjects to the moon on a whim and goes on her way to constantly prank them.

Moe: If Friendship is Magic is My Little Pony mixed with Anime Tropes, then expect the series to include elements of Moe in its setting, thus contributing to its popularity from a large section of the Anime demographic. Specific examples include:

In "A Canterlot Wedding", Imposter-Cadance/Queen Chrysalis crossed this by leaving Twilight trapped in the mines under Canterlot which were long forgotten so nopony would ever find her. Then taunting her with that fact, just to rub it in. And then it's revealed she did the exact same thing with the real Cadance, who is in rough shape by the time Twilight finds her. All this after letting an already-broken and regretful Twilight think all is forgiven.

"The Crystal Empire" does this to King Sombra immediately upon his introduction, in which it is revealed that he used Black Magic to turn the Crystal Empire into Mordor and enslave the crystal ponies who lived there. Worse still, he's given no excuse for his crimes — Nightmare Moonhad a tragic backstory, and though it doesn't remotely excuse their actions, Discord and Chrysalis were at least motivated by some component of their natures. Sombra, though, was just a regular unicorn who decided to seize power for himself even if it meant ruining the lives of everyone around him. Appropriately, the episode presents him more as a monstrous force of evil than as an actual character.

"Wonderbolts Academy" gives us Lightning Dust, a brash, competitive flyer who is always eager to accept a challenge. This takes a drastic turn when she and Rainbow Dash are assigned to clear clouds for a team exercise. She leads Rainbow Dash into creating a tornado which she inevitably can't control and winds up sucking in the rest of the Mane Six. After Rainbow Dash leads the other pegasi into saving her friends, Lightning Dust crosses it when she shows no concern over what happened. Rainbow Dash chides her, telling her that her friends could have been killed due to her recklessness but she brushes it aside and offers a hoofbump.

In "Twilight's Kingdom - Part 2", if Lord Tirek hadn't crossed this already, he certainly did when he imprisoned Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rarity and Spike, drained their magic, betrayed Discord, and'' drained him of his magic. Even earlier than that, he banishes Celestia, Luna, and Cadance to Tartarus, even though they have no magic and are powerless to do anything against him.

Discord is an interesting case. In "The Return of Harmony" he comes dangerously close to crossing the MEH by cheating at his own game and mentally torturing the main ponies. "Keep Calm and Flutter On" heavily implies that Discord did this in self-defense. By pretending to be Fluttershy's friend, he eventually becomes the mask and makes a Heel-Face Turn. In "Twilight's Kingdom", betraying all of Equestria to Tirek, including Fluttershy, would almost count as this, but due to his recurring remorse and reaction to Tirek betraying him not only make him sympathetic, but solidify his Heel-Face Turn.

Princess Celestia banished somepony into the Moon only once (reluctantly even) within the series' canon. The princess is now notorious within the fandom as an Evil Overlord for banishing anyone or anything she dislikes into the Moon. We have this to thank for most of the "TO THE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" stereotypes associated with Celestia.

Given that the first episode of season 2 reveals she dealt in a similar fashion (albeit with a different form of punishment) with another ancient evil, there may be more truth to this than fans ever imagined. Though in her defense, Luna helped do that one and Discord probably earned it.

Let's not forget Jerk Celestia which many fans enjoyed turning the princess into an unpleasant pony thanks to those memes and all, mainly in parody comics.

The candid photo of Celestia gorging herself on cake is another thing nobody will get over. At this point, any brony humor relating to Celestia is almost guaranteed to involve cake, banishment, or both.

Really, a character does anything in this show entire memes will spawn and Fanon forged around it, especially background ponies. One of the most famous examples is Derpy's muffin obession is based on a line heard in "Applebuck Season". However she's among a group of other ponies that are also there for free muffins, some of them drooling, and she's among three ponies whose mouths flap in the scenenote In fact, it could be argued the line better fits Sea Swirl/Seafoam and Minuette/Colgate's mouth movements, but that's over analyzing at its finest.

For another such example, Lyra Heartstrings' fanon personality revolves around her obsession with humans. This is based on her human-like posture in the background in one episode.

Pinkie Pie turned "Pinkamena"note they call this state as "Pinkamena" due to the fact that Pinkie Pie's appearance dramatically changes similar to when she was a sad straight-maned filly in her family's rock farm. This was also the time we learn of her full name for the first time only once in the entire series yet this is one of the things that she is known for. It's gotten to the point where everyone is expecting Pinkie's mane to deflate whenever she gets depressed. And is portrayed as homicidal when it happens, instead of self-destructive. Though, the whole homicidal personality did not come from the show but from a certain fanfic.

Princess Cadance not inviting Spike back to the Crystal Empire to help out with the preparations for the games and/or welcoming the inspector even though he was the one who ultimately saved it has not gone well with some of the fans.

"A Canterlot Wedding" held a bunch of Never Live It Down moments, ranging from the aforementioned "Luna is useless", to Celestia being weak, to the ponies ditching Twilight for the fake Princess Cadance.

Scootaloo is known for being called a "chicken" even though she was called as one only once and it was because she and Applebloom were bickering on how to call a chicken. Another thing that made this popular among the fans was due to the fact that Scootaloo doesn't seem to be able to truly fly even though she has wings. Just like a chicken.

Firecracker Burst was originally released with her description "Firecracker Burst loves watching fireworks and guessing how they'll look when they burst — it's always a surprise!" shortened to just "Firecracker Burst loves surprises!" Combined with her fire cutie mark, this led to fans interpreting her as a pyromaniac.

Cherry Fizzy is primarily remembered for one thing. Kicking Derpy off stage making her sad in "Hearth's Warming Eve".

A meta example: The Japanese version left four of the songs in its original language: "Winter Wrap Up", "Art of the Dress", "Becoming Popular", and "The Heart Carol". Admittedly, three out of four of these were pretty major songs, but because of this, every time an episode with a major song (or even just any song) is about to air in Japan, members of the English-speaking fanbase tend to say, "Hey, maybe this time they'll actually dub the song!"

Fluttershy has had a few Freak Outs here and there, but largely remains the gentle, shy pony of the bunch. From the fandom alone, you'd think that she's a Mood-Swinger at best or Yandere at worst.

The dragon from Dragonshy becomes this as a result of Fluttershy setting him straight. When he starts talking normally, he whines "But that rainbow one kicked me!"

Twilight's Imagine Spot in "A Bird in the Hoof" where Fluttershy is banished with imprisonment becomes this when Fluttershy bends her cage's bars, softening the effect.

No Yay: Discord teleporting into Spike's bed, under the covers while he's sleeping and asking "Where's Twilight?" leaving Spike curled up in the fetal position, shaking.

One-Scene Wonder: Many one-shot characters that have shown up for little gags have left a lasting impression.

We should start with, of course, the pony patron of this trope: Vinyl "DJ Pon-3" Scratch. Proof that all you need to be popular is to have a cool design, she originally only appeared for a few seconds in "Suited for Success" doing nothing but bobbing her head; yet she became one of the most popular characters in the show. She returned in the Season 2 finale for the Dance Party Ending, revealing her eye color (they're magenta, by the way).

While Derpy is not a One-Scene Wonder character, her speaking scene in "The Last Roundup" came as such a surprise a ton of fans forget the episode was about Applejack.

Crackle, the rather amusing-looking dragon in "Dragon Quest" that just so happens to look like the ponies' dragon disguise.

Discord is capable of shapeshifting. That's paranoia fuel enough for younger audiences (specifically, the target audience). He could be any stranger you meet!

When Pinkie Pie is chasing after you, go ahead and hide. No matter where you go, you can never escape. She will find you. Even when you're in a place that she couldn't possibly reach, yup, she's there. This is taken Up to Eleven if you break a Pinkie Promise, and she Turns Red.

The Changelings have the explicit ability and tactic of turning into your loved ones, and they can use mind control to keep you from noticing or fighting back.

Subverted. They originally intended to do this with someone who sounded like John de Lancie, but someone suggested they get the real de Lancie instead.

Played straight with Tirek's voice actor, who, in his "weak" voice, is clearly trying to sound like Tim Curry (which actually lead to a rumor that Tim Curry was indeed Tirek's voice actor). To be fair, he only sounds like this very briefly, as he later ditches the Tim Curry impersonating for a more "generic" monster lord voice.

Many people admit to hating Rarity early into the show, since she comes off as dim, shallow, arrogant and useless — in other words, typical Rich Bitch, the very stereotype she is designed to subvert. It's not until a bunch of episodes, starting with "Suited for Success", came out, giving her a lot of screen time, massive Character Development, and actually living up to her element more often that they started warming up to her. She quickly caught up with the rest of the cast in terms of popularity.

When the Cutie Mark Crusaders were introduced, they were feared to be annoying one-note characters who didn't serve any purpose other than being more relatable to the series' target audience. However, as later episodes have depicted them as having more depth beyond their search for their cutie marks, fans have come to appreciate them on the same level as the Mane 6.

Princess Cadance was a Base Breaker after her introduction in the season two finale, "A Canterlot Wedding," with some fans feeling she was a step backwards to the franchise's previous, more stereotypically girly generations due to being a literally pink princess whose special power was love. Being introduced entirely out of the blue with a minor helping of Remember the New Guy in a two-part episode revolving entirely around her wedding, and having been replaced by an evil shapeshifter until the last 10 minutes of the second episode didn't help matters. This dissenting faction quickly changed their tune after the season three two-part opener, "The Crystal Empire," when she helped thwart the villain by having her husband pick her up and throw her off a tower at him because she was too sick to fly under her own power.

Upon her introduction Babs Seed was not a liked character in the least. She came off as something of a sociopath with the way she bullied the Cutie Mark Crusaders far beyond what the other two bullies ever did which her Freudian Excuse hardly came close to justifying, and many fans thought at the very least she could have careened off that cliff and ended up in the mud before her Heel-Face Turn. However, fast-forward only four episodes and she was portrayed in a far more likeable light as a very lovable character, gaining her a ton of popularity. Helping further is her reappearance in an issue of the comics where she is able to bond with fellow reformed antagonist Trixie and helps her catch a jewel thief who framed her.

At the end of "Keep Calm and Flutter On", many fans disliked the newly turned-good Discord, as many fans liked him because he was so despicable and dangerous and that his reformation came completely out of character. As of the season 4 premiere, those who hated the reformed Discord warmed up to him after he was reestablished as The Imp, still mischievous and very potentially dangerous and tenuously held back by a newfound sense of honor and friendship.

Discord enjoys enormous popularity, many of his fans wanting the fun-loving, Laughably EvilTrickster to succeed in his goal of eternal chaos. It didn't hurt that in his introductory episode, one of the main characters (namely Pinkie Pie) seemed perfectly fine with a guy who makes chocolate milk rain from the sky.

The Changelings have their fans, arguing that despite the cruelty of their queen most Changelings just want somethingto eat.

Since the show has picked up a notoriously large male Periphery Demographic, Snips and Snails gained a lot of ire early on for being the main representation of males in Ponyville. The fact that they're unattractive, dopey, and obnoxious didn't sit well with a crowd of men more educated than the show's intended audience effectively, they're the gendered version of an Ethnic Scrappy. Later episodes helped tone this down as Snips and Snails appeared less often while other much nicer male characters like Spike, Big Macintosh, CarrotCake and Shining Armor got more focus. By the second and third seasons, their appearances were limited enough that their Scrappy status dwindled considerably, and their roles in episodes like "Magic Duel" (wherein they get tortured over the course of the episode by fan-favorite character The Great And Powerful Trixie) were clearly to those episodes' benefit.

Twist gets it the worst since all it took was a nerdy lisp and already most fans have despised her regardless of the fact that Twist is a kind filly who appeared to be Apple Bloom's only friend prior to Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle showing up.

Snips and Snails get their just desserts in "Magic Duel" when they are abused by Trixie, whose cart they ended up wrecking through their own stupidity in her first appearance.

Also, whenever Diamond Tiara receives karmic punishments from her bullying. Not all the time though.

Angel appearing to get crushed in "Castle Mane-ia". Yeah, we know the whole time it's not him, but it's hard to imagine a similar gag being done with the likes of Gummy or Winona.

Angel gets it again in "Castle Sweet Castle", as Twilight deliberately kicks him into a puddle for an excuse to keep hanging out with Fluttershy, and then he suffers the further indignity of being dried so much that his hair poofs out.

Princess Luna. With her being purified of her Nightmare Moon side, she was certainly set up to be a good recurring character for season 1, at least as a sidekick of sorts for Celestia, but she didn't appear at all. In season 2, they at least explained that "Luna Eclipsed" marked her first public appearance since being rescued, and then she was again clearly set up to be a recurring character again, but, alas, she still didn't appear at all for the rest of the season until the finale. Eventually, the writers caught on by season 3, and now Luna seems to be inseparable from Celestia, averting this.

Another one (some may even consider him to be the most notable one) is KingSombra. While arguably the most competent and deadly of villains, Sombra was portrayed with so little character development and focus, many fans find it difficult to feel the impact he was meant to have on our heroes. His forms were frightening, his abilities were terrifyingly powerful and his legacy on the Crystal Ponies was more than unsettling, which only makes it even worse that he had very few lines and didn't even interact once with the mane cast. Top it all off with a rather anti-climatic death in the form of being blasted to oblivion, and one can't help but feel slightly bitter about it.

This is actually inverted with Discord when the writers realized his potential as a character after his defeat in his debut episode, and was brought back with a Heel-Face Turn afterwards as a result. The fact that Discord is so popular and that John de Lancie gets to do more voice acting for them probably helped with this a lot.

In Twilights Kingdom Part 1, Scorpan is mentioned during Tirek's backstory as Tirek's brother, and is never seen or mentioned again, other than in the next episode when Tirek says that the medallion he gave to Discord belonged to Scorpan. Whether it means that Tirek killed Scorpan in revenge, or that he was merely unavailable as he lives in a foreign country and the only reliable long distance communication is via Spike and Celestia, leaves his fate ambiguous.

Babs Seed who was inducted as the fourth Cutie Mark Crusader at the end of One Bad Apple, opening up a flood of possibilities for her to crusade either in Ponyville or her hometown of Manehattan. Her next appearance later in the season briefly mentions her new life in Manehattan and making friends with two other blank flanked foals. After that, she was Put on a Bus until early on in the fifth season where it was revealed off-screen that she got her cutie mark.

Shining Armor is starting to get this due to his Bad Ass Decay above. He is the captain of the Royal Guard yet in every appearance after his first, he has been reduced to getting his butt whupped by the Big Bad or crying at least Once a Season.

Flutterhulk from Power Ponies can be considered this, particularly when she sheepishly apologizes for destroying Mane-iac's hairspray cannon.

Uncanny Valley: The pony's faces look extremely human-like when viewed from the front, and can look quite unsettling to first-time viewers... And then designs for Equestria Girls came in...

The artwork in the Expanded Universe picture book Under the Sparkling Sea sometimes falls under this. Mary Jane Begin is a good artist, and to her credit the illustrations are wonderfully painted, but her detailed pseudo-realistic art style doesn't mesh well with the cartoonish character designs (most evident with faces).

Vanilla Protagonist: Twilight to some degree in the first season. Most of her role focused more on her Fish out of Water status as a way to develop Ponyville's customs and civilians, having less personality centric episodes than the other five. Season Two onwards averted this, not only by finally giving Twilight episodes entirely devoted to her ownpersonality and story arc as a student to Celestia, but also demoting her slightly for more an Ensemble Cast setup.

There have been two ponies so far (Lickety Split from "Secret of My Excess" and the young earth pony who gets a bowling Cutie Mark at the beginning of "The Cutie Pox") who have male-looking head shapes, but also have eyelashes which are only visible when their eyes are closed or not fully open.

Scootaloo and Babs Seed. Both have short hair and rather masculine demeanour and voices. About the only giveaway as to their real gender are the very short eyelashes carried by both of them.

Rainbow Dash can qualify for this. Besides being primarily blue (a typically masculine color), she often behaves in a boyish manner and is voiced with a classic example of the young-boy-portrayed-by-female-voice-actor voice. You could probably come up with a good Drinking Game. Just take a swig every time you have to correct yourself for thinking of Rainbow as a him.

Played for laughs in "Suited For Success". After Rarity's fashion show ended in disaster (thanks to trying too hard to give her friends "perfect" dresses), suffering a brutal review by a fashion critic and getting laughed at by the other ponies, she locked herself in her shop and cried out in shame and depression. This one may actually be justified, since she just wanted to please her friends, since they didn't like the dresses she made, and she didn't know that the fashion show would end up in disaster.

Rarity: Leave me alone! I vant to be alone! I want to wallow in... whatever it is that ponies are supposed to wallow in! Do ponies wallow in pity? Oh, listen to me! I don't even know what I'm supposed to wallow in! I'm so PATHETIC!!!

Rarity is the master of trope, but Twilight can wangst something fierce too.

Rainbow Dash: AAAUUGH! What do I do?! Everypony's going to see me fail! The Wonderbolts will never let a loser like me join! Princess Celestia would probably banish me to the Everfree Forest! MY LIFE IS RUINED!

Wheelchair Woobie: Played with. Every time she used her adult walker, Granny Smith was the butt of a joke.

When Gilda terrifies her into thinking there's a rattlesnake, she gimps away as fast as she can. Which is no faster than she usually moves. You just don't do that sort of thing to someone as old as Granny, which explains some of the hatred towards Gilda.

Oddly enough, the one time a character was actually in a wheelchair (Twilight after she fell down some stairs), it was treated as Amusing Injuries.

According to various queries, Russians hate Rarity - she fares only on par with one-off and background ponies, way behind the mane cast. CMC and Spike are even worse. "Lesson Zero" is considered one of the worst episodes, same for all CMC episodes. Surprisingly, "Sisterhooves Social", despite being heavy on CMC and Rarity, is rated very high... two negatives equal positive?

Comments left on Japanese fansubs indicate that Trixie is not thought of very highly over there - her bossiness and show-offiness makes her seem (even more) disrespectful and unsympathetic. At least initially. See Germans Love David Hasselhoff above.

According to this article, the fandom was not pleased to hear that this show received no Emmy nominations, while Transformers Prime received six (and to make matters worse, the series won two, both for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation).

This case is a bit of a misnomer as in general the Transformers and My Little Pony fandoms get along very well, even ganging up on the transgressors in the comments

For the 39th Daytime Emmy Awards the following year, both of FIM's entries for Best Original Song ("Becoming Popular (The Pony Everypony Should Know)" and "Find A Pet Song") lost to "In the Happy Little Land of Hoboken Surprise". To say the fandom wasn't happy was an understatement.

The two aforementioned entries are still FIM's only Emmy nominations, having received none the following two years.

Canon Fodder: The fanfiction community for the show is one of the biggest and fastest growing fanfiction communities in all media fandoms. One of the many reasons is the many gaps in the details about the history of the FiM universe. Fanfic writers have a field day answering questions such as "What turned Luna into Nightmare Moon?", "What happened between the founding of Equestria and the rule of Discord?", "Where does the Hearts and Hooves Day backstory fit into this?", and so on.

Daniel Ingram, the show's composer, gets some of his own worship for composing the series' Awesome Music.

M.A. Larson is one of the more well-received writers on the staff, most famous for "Sonic Rainboom", "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", Discord's debut two-parter, and the full-fledged introduction of Princess Luna.

This attitude has gone sadly extreme, actually: There is a large amount of fans who hold Faust to be absolutely infallible and praiseworthy, and a smaller, but still significant, reaction of fans who get irritated at others' praise of Faust, and paint her as an ungrateful quitter (after she left during season two), a Moral Guardian, or any number of insults concerning her style, attitudes, or actions.

Counterpart Comparison: The similarities between the Mane Six and the Sonic Team has not gone unnoticed. Sonic/Rainbow Dash is especially famous, for their speed, competitive behaviour and big Awesome Egos. Other comparisons that has been made are: Tails/Twilight Sparkle (for their intelligence and helpful personalities), Amy Rose/Pinkie Pie (for their energetic and girly spirits), Knuckles/Applejack (for their strength and stubborness), Rouge/Rarity (for their love for diamonds and sensuality), Cream/Fluttershy (for their Friend to All Living Things policy and kindness). Smaller comparisons has been made between Silver/Trixie and Vector/DJ-Pon3.

A few people got sick of the Trollesta/Molestia/Tyranlestia/etc jokes and comments that are implemented on Celestia all the time in fanon. It's slowly dying down as of late but not by much and the damage to Celestia's reputation was already done due to the memes from the start.

The same can be said of Cupcakes Pinkie Pie which seems to be way worse than the Molestia treatments at some points.

Both Scootabuse and Sweetieabuse are pretty much dead at this point.

Epileptic Trees: For a show where the creators claim they don't "hammer logic very hard", the fans sure like to speculate on stuff. Just look at our own massive Wild Mass Guessing pages. Yes. Pages. Massive pages. And we're probably gonna need more.

Fanfic Fuel: The fanfiction community for the show is huge. In addition to the Canon Fodder described above, the show has the tendency to drop things that serve as good starting points for fanfiction.

Why are Celestia and Luna apparently the only winged unicorns in the series?

Did anything interesting happen in the thousand years between Nightmare Moon's imprisonment and the pilot?

In "Hearts and Hooves Day", the Cutie Mark Crusaders create a love potion, but they only use a very small amount and leave quite a bit in the pitcher. Cue Shipping Fics involving one pony (or more) accidentally drinking the potion and hilarity ensuing.

The introduction of Tartarus and time travel spells in "It's About Time" has given rise to many fanfics

The questionable actions of Shining Armor, The Mane Six, and Celestia that were taken during first part of the second season finale had garnered a bit of fuel, having writers insert bitterness into Twilight when she alienated everyone she ever loved, even when she was right about her suspicions surrounding the fake Cadance and write out stories calling out the ponies involved.

During the space between seasons 2 and 3, Hasbro released a series of Friendship is Magic posters... including an official map of Equestria which featured a number of new locales to tickle the imaginations of fanfic writers.

Trailers for Inspiration Manifestation showing a green-eyed Rarity with her horn glowing the same color had fans wondering if King Sombra or Queen Chrysalis would be involved (they aren't). Given that all of Rarity's designs involve heavy use of crystals and gemstones and Twilight explicitly refers to the book's powers as dark magic, the episode looks to be implying that the book came from Sombra but backs off before stating it, leaving it open to speculation.

Given that the jewels were only a result of Rarity's design style and not part of the spell she used, they were probably a red herring as far as Sombra was concerned, but the gradual loss of reason and increase in power was similar to the effects of the Alicorn Amulet.

Equestria Games: Who are the delegates from other lands, and what are their kingdoms like? Plus, all the characters on the other teams, and what events the other ponies from Ponyville were participating in, and how the parts of the games that we didn't see (which were most of them) went, and Equestria's relationship with the griffon kingdom that sent a team (assuming it wasn't a griffon-majority territory located in Equestrian boundaries), and how the actual anthems of Ponyville and Cloudsdale go...

As of Twilights Kingdom Part 1, on top of fans tying the series back to G1 now more than ever, we have Scorpan, another G1 based character and Tirek's brother who befriended ponykind but left soon after Tirek was imprisoned. This is itself a reference to the original Scorpan, who also pulled a Heel-Face Turn against Tirek near the end of the G1 pilot. Oh yes, and Discord and Tirek know each other somehow.

Yet another meta example: Lauren Faust is usually tolerant about rule 34 as long as the fans don't keep reminding her of it, but it does disturb her to know that fans have drawn porn of her Author Avatar "Fausticorn".

Let's just say that nobody is neutral about the infamous ending of "A Canterlot Wedding, part 1", nor the blatant Broken Aesop of part 2. It's reaction is divided into three camps; those who absolutely despise it, those who vehemently defend it, and those who are sick of the whole matter and prefer to forget about it. It's best not to bring it up altogether.

Inverted with fanart that crosses over MLP with other works, which tends to get fans of the latter exceptionally offended, even if the fanart is perfectly worksafe.

Some fans of FiM tried and mostly failed to start this when they felt snubbed at the Daytime Emmys for Transformers Prime, however for the most part Transformers fans and My Little Pony fans get along extremely well, which makes sense if you consider most male pony fans probably grew up watching Transformers instead of the early generations of ponies. Also, both properties are owned by Hasbro, so there is a natural brother/sister dynamic. In fact, the Transformers fanbase and the "old" MLP fanbase, the one who existed even before FiM came along, have historically had good relations that retain to this day. Although there was some friction caused by the more outspoken fans of all three groups, many regard the series as like siblings. When Howard Stern made a harsh criticism against the Pony fandom, the level of raging Big Brother Instinct coming out of the Transfans was huge.

There appears to be a mild rivalry between bronies and fans of Adventure Time, with many who dislike Fi M holding up Adventure Time as a superior alternative.

There is also a bit of vitriol between FiM and Homestuck; for quite a while, whenever ponies appeared on Homestuck image boards, everyone would flip out, and vice versa for pony image boards. However, after the Homestuck image board hit a Hard Reset and lost all of its comments, the pony-Homestuck battles have lessened considerably (though they haven't disappeared completely).

In certain places, a noticeable hate towards Sonic the Hedgehog seems to be developing. Equestria Daily has had a ban on FiM/Sonic crossover content of ANY kind for a while now. This is due to negative reactions from staffers and beta readers, along with the volatile reactions whenever Sonic related content was initially posted. There are exceptions to this: a fan-made Sonic style Super Mode for Rainbow Dash has made it onto the Drawfriend posts and one fanfic that only featured Dr. Eggman/Robotnik and OC ponies got past the beta readers, only to get the same level of venom as expected in the comment box. Some theorize that the bronies hate Sonic out of the fear of becoming like the Sonicfanbase (and, at worst,they can come off as not being too far off). Meanwhile in the Sonic fandom, opinions of FiM are just about the same as you'd get elsewhere, although some of the saner Sonic fans will remark on how the brony fans makes the Sonic fans look easier to deal with in comparison. Despite this, there are plenty of crossover pictures and fanfic to be found (even shipping Sonic with Rainbow Dash). And, yes, at least oneAwesome Music mashup.

Fandom Rivalry even exists within the franchise. Scuffles are known to pop up between some of the those who're fans of G3/G3.5 and Tales from time to time.

Another major example occurs between Ponychan posters and "/mlp/" posters. The former sees that latter as "bronies in name only" who do not follow any of the "love and tolerate" polices that the former believes the fandom is built on. On the other hand, the latter sees the former as "douchebags" who should just "give in to the internet."

Some fans of educational Slice of Life programming also do not get along well with some bronies since FiM season 2, with the former seeing the latter as crude trolls who ran a promising slice of life show into the ground by pressuring Hasbro to drop the slice of life format in favor of more villains and adventure, costing the show its E/I status. The latter sees the educational slice of life fans as babies who should go back to watching Barney & Friendsnote Adding salt to the wound, many educational slice of life fans hate Barney for its unrealistic depiction of school and family life anyway, making this an extremely hurtful insult.

Ditto for bronies and the Battlefield 3 fandom, owing in large part to the fact that the first MLP thread on Battlelog was infested with Rule 34 links and fandom arguments.

This also happens with Ffrries too. Some bronies subscribe to furry stereotypes and some are uncomfortable with them, while some furries simply hate having to sift through dozens of pages of pony art.

Cartoon Network's action shows are developing an Unknown Rival dynamic here. Cartoon Network has a storied history of canceling shows because their target demographic is 5-11 year old boys, but their action shows seem to be much more popular among teenage girls and young women, and they don't want to sell them merchandise. FiM, by comparison, has a target audience of 5-11 year old girls, but the periphery demographic of adult men have been embraced, have merchandise created especially for them, and even have a documentary about them. Cartoon Network claims that girls won't buy boys' toys, but Hasbro has no problem selling girls' toys to boys. The implication that male fans are somehow more valuable than female fans has led to cries of sexism and double standard.

Since 2012, FIM's fan base hasn't been very forgiving towards that of The Penguins of Madagascar. In that year, both of FIM's Emmy Award nominations for Best Original Song lost to the rival's "In the Happy Little Land of Hoboken Surprise".

MLP fans have recently set up and aimed their rage lasers at Filly Funtasia, for obvious reasons. Last October a Filly trailer caught wind on Equestria Daily and Bronies did not take kindly to it. At all. Even though Filly Funtasia hasn't made its debut yet, Filly Fans are currently batting down the hatches for the upcoming fan war with the Bronies. Even BRB Internacional themselves are well aware of this.

There are some clueless folks out there assuming that liking the show automatically makes you a zoophile or a pedophile. At least one video, made to look like a fan video but actually one where bronies are derided as pedophiles and creeps, received angry comments from parents and older siblings lamenting that they now have to explain to their children what a pedophile is.

4chan, particularly /v/ hates ponies with a passion. The site was flooded so much with viral material that the servers chugged constantly, forcing a ban on ponies to /co/ until the inception of /mlp/. During this quagmire, ponychan was created as a safe haven...and regarded as a hugbox because of it.

Rainbow Dash is considered by many in the fandom to be the "lesbian" pony (probably due to her boyish appearance, rainbow motif, and attitude... which happens to be exactly the stereotype that Lauren Faust dislikes).

After Lyra Heartstrings was shown sitting human-style on a bench, she was portrayed as having a marked interest in humans, even wanting to be one in certain works.

Derpy Hooves is depicted as a letter carrier who is somewhat obsessed with muffins, has a unicorn daughter named Dinky (who shows no connection to Derpy in the actual show, but looks like her), and is anywhere between Inspirationally Disadvantaged and merely a space cadet.

There are so many fanon surrounding the background ponies that we have created an entire page dedicated on documenting and studying it.

Princess Luna being confirmed to be corrupted by an outside force was the source of many fanon, with Discord and King Sombra being both being popular candidates for the culprit. However, the IDW comic thoroughly jossed a lot of theories about that.

Earth ponies having Super Strength, or at least being physically stronger than the other two races, is a common fanon to correct a perceived "imbalance" between earth ponies and the other two.

It is better off if one doesn't get too into the fanon, lest canon comes along and renders it invalid. Flame Wars have erupted due to details in the actual show apparently not fitting their fanon exactly.

Based on Pinkie's canon birthday of May 3, a statement of hers saying that she was born on a Tuesday, pseudocanon materials like Equestria Girls treating the mane six as teenagers or young adults and assuming the series takes place in a similar year to real life, some fans have started guessing that Pinkie was born in 1994 and is most likely in her early twenties.

Works both ways. Many fans of the G4 toys also completely ignore the show for various reasons. The announcement that Hasbro is going to sync the toys to the show already has some fans of the toys crying foul.

Princess Twilight Sparkle is discontinued by a fraction of the community.

Due to how close the events of Daring Don't are to a fanfiction completely imagined by Rainbow Dash, from their quick bonding to the multitude of questions raised by the events of the books taking place in actual Equestria, even becoming Daring's first sidekick in the end, some fans have taken to considering the episode as 22 minutes inside Rainbow's imagination.

First Installment Wins: The first season, the only one to have Lauren Faust's undivided attention, is the only season to have near-universal praise for being a huge breath of fresh air in shows aimed at young children. Later season tend to be more divisive.

Transformers and My Little Pony share something of a brother/sister dynamic going as far back at the 80s with both franchises' first show incarnations. Being arguably the the two largest of their franchises, Hasbro has done nothing to stop this relation. Almost every generation of one series correlated with one from the other, and there was a very broad group of fans that crisscrossed between the two. This showed up best when Transformers Prime and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic became flagship series for The Hub network and had very frequent crossover gags in the animated commercials.

With fans of Valve Software games, since Team Fortress 2 helped spread the word of the show in its early days, and crossovers with Valve games are probably the most common pony crossovers.

Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Bushiroad at least thought this would be the case in Japan, as they gave its Japanese dub considerable hype and aiming it towards both little girls since many of the characters line up with established Japanese archetypical characters. As it turns out, though, this applies to the Japanese dub itself; while it the handful fans that existed before it was dubbed, it hasn't been doing too well thanks to being crowded out by the sea of many other Japanese shows that feature similar themes. Western fans, on the other hand, love the Japanese dub thanks to all of the Woolseyisms that it incorporates in trying to imitate other anime archetypes.

"When I took the job, I braced myself for criticism, expecting many people — without even watching the show — to instantly label it girly, stupid, cheap, for babies or an evil corporate commercial. I encourage skeptics like this to watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic with an open mind. If I'm doing my job right, I think you'll be surprised."

Guilty Pleasure: One of the main descriptives given by several fans for liking it.

Holy Shit Quotient: Everything in Twilight's Kingdom Part 2, from the Golden Oaks Library's destruction and the fight scene that follows is definitely not the sort of thing most would think would ever appear in the show.

As is Tirek causing the stained glass window depicting Princess Twilight to melt.

Luna gets this a lot too, expect at least one person to claim she's overrated when talking about her.

The sheer amount of zeal many Derpy fans possess for the character can make some bronies feel the opposite about her.

Hypocritical Fandom: Adverted at first, but becomes this when liking the show became more social acceptable. The Brony fandom started as a tight-knit and very sincere group of people who were sick of the kind of needless drama caused by most fandoms and felt that a fandom based around a show about love and tolerance should, itself, promote love and tolerance. Nowadays, Bronies are only a fraction of the fandom, which has now bloated up with unpleasant people who only like the show because it's "cool" and disown the "love and tolerance" model, leading to a lot of intolerance and in-fighting with other fandoms.

Bring up "Feeling Pinkie Keen" on the adult-fan websites. Fans argue over the intended message and if it was a good message to have in the first place.

Also the episode "Over a Barrel" seems to have this effect. These episodes were both written by Dave Polsky, which is probably no small coincidence.

Bronies were in quite an uproar over several toys of background ponies. More specifically, they were mad about the official names, which are the way they are not because Hasbro is snubbing the fandom (in fact, they do◊ try to utilize names fans have developed), but mainly because of Writing Around Trademarks, or the inverse, trying to create a name that can be trademarked.

Do not bring up "The Mysterious Mare Do Well" on any of the fan websites, unless you want to send everyone into a heated discussion over things like whether or not the episode was any good.

For that matter, DO NOT mention Merriwether Williams on any fan site. Not only will every thread drift back to MMDW, but things will always degenerate into a Flame War over whether she should still work on the show and whether she's gotten better.

Mention Derpy's behavior in "The Last Roundup" if you have to - but make sure you're wearing asbestos underpants if you want to stick around for the Flame Wars between the "There's nothing offensive about her character, she's just acting silly" camp and the "She's an offensive stereotype of the mentally handicapped" camp. Amy Keating Rogers even received a bit of hate mail for Derpy's depiction claiming she was offensive and a jab at mentally-challenged people, even though other characters in the show are depicted as similarly dopey and, as Rogers pointed out, she has a mentally-challenged son herself.

And then fans started causing a ruckus due to worries that Hasbro was taking Derpy down, based on iTunes removing "The Last Roundup" (though The Hub's and later Hasbro's temporary online uploads still included it, and it's still on Shout! Factory's DVD The Friendship Express) and WeLoveFine removing and/or renaming their licensed merchandise (though in some cases only temporarily, as it turned out).

iTunes later re-added TLR with edits to Derpy's scene: she's no longer referred to by name, her voice sounds completely different, and her eyes have mostly been un-crossed. No, the fanbase did not take it well. At all. Even later, this edited version went on to be aired by The Hub.

Howard Stern's report on bronies has caused a lot of controversy between both fans and haters of the show, after he, to no surprise, portrayed the fanbase in a negative light. Fans completely unaware of how to handle a shock jock proceeded to send hate mail to him, which only gave him material for a followup.

There was quite a big one in response to the confirmation that Twilight was to become an alicorn and a princess of Equestria alongside Celestia and Luna.

Here's one debate that often brings out the ugly side of the fandom: How to depict the Mane 6 as humans. If you decide to draw the ponies as humans, and depict any of them as an ethnicity other then Caucasian (white), be prepared to have a dozen or so bronies to jump down your throat and claim that they shouldn't be depicted as (insert your non-white ethnicity here), then have another dozen to come in and claim that the first dozen as being racist. God help you if you decided to depict poor Fluttershy wearing a hijab. It's no wonder that Hasbro decided to go with the "Doug Approach" and depict them as the same colors as their pony incarnations.

The fans themselves are sometimes looked upon with scorn, primarily for spamming image-boards with pony-related content, regardless of what that board is meant for.

LGBT Fanbase: Homosexual pairings are very popular in the fandom for both the mares and the stallions. The Mane Six in particular seem to be shipped with each other or with popular guest star and/or background mares more often than with stallions, and the comparatively few (important) stallions in the show tend to be shipped with each other with some regularity (especially Big Mac and Braeburn).

Mis-blamed: Fans are quick to blame Hasbro for the show's problems. However, Hasbro is only responsible for deciding on whether or not an episode is OK to air ("green lighting" as they call it). The real company to blame is DHX Media, who is responsible for everything in the show, since they're the company who animates the thing.

Fans have given major props to Lauren Faust for revitalizing the franchise in spite of her stepping down to creative consultant in the middle of season 2, ignoring other show-runners such as Meghan McCarthy and Jayson Thiessen.

Ever since the show has gained popularity, Faust has been given a lot more credit than My Little Pony's original creators (Bonnie Zacherle, Charles Muenchinger and Steve D'Aguanno).

Only The Creator Does It Right: Seeing as so much of the show and it's goals were Lauren Faust's brainchild, her leaving has been a frequent target of contempt about the earliest fans, who feel that something changed when she left that caused the show to lose quality.

Derpy's canonization (having started with shirts and promos, with it all but confirmed in "The Last Roundup") is one massive catering to the Brony community.

A number of seemingly minor interactions by the background ponies are a result of Ascended Fanon, such as Lyra Heartstrings and Bon Bon hanging out together, Berry Punch continuing to be an implied alcoholic, and Derpy having a muffin pin on her carry bag.

Oddly enough, the animator for "Call of the Cutie" confirms that they were originally trying for that interpretation of Berry Punch, but the belch that would originally have followed her drinking from the punch bowl didn't make it past Executive Meddling.

The mention that Alicorn Twilight and the possibility of a human-based adaptation being introduced has sent some bronies into an uproar, however. One of the main reasons of their complaints, of course, is this, due to the fact that there's a metric ton of fanart done of these very things well before they officially existed.

As described as above, some view the pandering as a negative trait. It's sometimes viewed as exploitation, a crutch to allow the writers to slack off in favour of cheap tricks to get laughs and cheers from the fanbase. It's impossible to please everyone, as several bronies absolutely cringed whenever they found Ascended Fanon.

Periphery Demographic: The very existence of this work page's Troper Critical Mass and its many Trope Overdosed subpagesnote Even those subpages have subpages of their own. is evidence enough. You can go to any website and you're guaranteed to discover a member or two who is a fan of the show or even the existence of an entire brony subcommunity within that site. The fandom has grown so large that even news media is taking notice.

Notice the number of reviews on this site.

Scapegoat Creator: It used to be Dave Polsky, but since then Merriwether Williams has become the prime target for fandom scorn. Unfortunately her first aired episode was not the best hoof to start out on, and since then, arguments have mutated from her just not getting the show, to more than a few fans pinning everything they dislike about season 2 on Merriwether's shoulders. Merely mentioning her name on many fan sites can cause an immediate Flame War. Never mind that she's just the writer, and has to go through editors and other members of the production team before her episodes are aired, or that she's helped write great episodes on other shows before FiM *cough Band Geeks cough*. No, she's just a bad writer that doesn't "get the show."

This hits incredible levels of Fridge Logic when you consider that her next episode "Hearth's Warming Eve" was extremely well received by a majority of the fanbase, and her episode "Wonderbolts Academy" was considered one of the high points of season 3.

It got even more ridiculous with season 4's "Bats!" Initial fan reaction to the episode was positive, but once word began circulating that Meghan McCarthy's writing credit was in error and it was actually Williams who wrote the episode, suddenly some fans didn't like it so much (though plenty of people still liked the episode, and there were some people who didn't like the episode even before this was revealed).

Scott Sonneborn was added to the mix in record time after his first episode, "Somepony To Watch Over Me," in which Applejack was interpreted by some to be out-of-character.

The lead up to the "Royal Wedding" made many fans angry over just about everything. Of course, most fans agreed it was much better than expected.

"Magical Mystery Cure", on the other hand, was incredibly divisive before airing due to its use of Nothing Is the Same Anymore, and remains fairly divisive to this day, although not entirely because of Princess Twilight.

Some Slice of Life fans who were drawn to the show by season 1 also feels this way about season 2.

The pony names from the toys (which in most cases only JossedFan Nicknames rather than changing previously-established official names). To say that the fans weren't happy is understating things.

Some Japanese fans are upset at the fact that the Japanese version will be using different opening and ending themes, preferring that they use the original theme songs. One fan even made a "Hitler Reacts" video in frustration.

Tough Act to Follow: It's easy to feel as though fans were "spoiled" by the first season, given the reactions to every season since ranging from positive-to-indifferent to outright negative.

Scenes that deserve special mention are Rainbow Dash's Sonic Rainboom, Princess Cadence and Shining Armor's love spell, the underground cave Queen Chrysalis traps Twilight in, the pegasus-powered water tornado in "Hurricane Fluttershy", Twilight's transformation sequence in "Magical Mystery Cure", Luna's transformation into Nightmare Moon in "Princess Twilight Sparkle" and the shot of the Cutie Mark Crusaders running against a sunset backdrop in "Flight to the Finish".

There are also many instances where the possibilities of Flash are used very cleverly. For instance, populating backgrounds with more or less randomly-generated ponies rather than using Faceless Masses.

Not to mention that these background ponies aren't just standing motionless in the background either. Looking closely in the background one can see them blinking, shifting and moving slightly, and talking to eachother.

And if what we have seen of season 4 so far is any indication, the animation quality is set to just keep improving. A particularly noticable change between seasons is that now, when there are close shots of characters, the backgrounds actually have depth of field!. We had seen depth of field tricks occasionally beforehand (Usually shifting depth of field from foreground to background), but now it seems to have become the norm for closeup shots.

With the Season 4 Finale, let's just say it's obvious where a fair chunk of Season 4's budget went. The effects in these two episodes are some of the greatest yet seen.

Game Informer took a very lighthearted and harmless jab at the show in their Timeline feature, which led to an [oversensitive brony] sending an angry letter ranting about how the ponies are badass and "not frilly". They poked some lighthearted fun at him while sincerely acknowledging the show's quality... [which led to more oversensitive bronies sending hate mail. By then, they could've easily ripped the bronies a new one and no one would've blamed them — yet incredibly, they took the high ground and vowed not hold a grudge against the fanbase. Instead of publishing any of their hate mail, they published a couple of letters from levelheaded bronies apologizing for the idiots in the fanbase. GI also specifically stated that frilly does not equal bad or lame — a sentiment Lauren Faust would agree with 100%.

Within the fandom, there are many people who voice their negative opinions of the show or certain episodes, and they are very loud and obnoxious about voicing their hatred. But judging by the amount of thumbs up comments praising the show or calling out the haters on EQD get, we have a Silent Majority of sane bronies.

Another vocal minority which evolved as of late are doing the opposite; being loud and obnoxious about anyone daring to talk against any aspect of the show, regardless of the arguments used. Their love of the series is such that any criticism is answered by sheer hatred and prejudice, which said Silent Majority only rarely acknowledges. Especially prevalent on EQD, in which repeat posters routinely insult and despise anyone going against the majority.

Win Back the Crowd: After the comparatively lukewarm reception of season 3, season 4 was largely heralded as a welcome return to form, as despite its own share of less popular episodes, it featured an unprecedented level of forward planning and nods to the fans.

Other

Ear Worm: So far, pretty much every song has been declared an ear worm. Naturally overlaps with Awesome Music.

Good Bad Translation: One line in the Japanese version mistranslates Applejack's "Widdle Rarity" as "Peeing Rarity". Most Japanese audiences found this line to be hilarious.

Magnum Opus: The series itself is one for Lauren Faust. Even she herself seems to agree. For in-show examples...

Two-parters, "Twilight'sKingdom", it's also this for the series, due to the extremely epic confrontation, paying off the then controversial Discord's Heel-Face Turn and Twilight's princesshood to satisfaction, and avoiding the Broken Base the last two season finales caused.

Season 2: "Hurricane Fluttershy", for having Fluttershy go through a relatable conflict, and overall great lessons.

Season 3: "Magical Mystery Cure". Despite the hugely base-breaking decision of making Twilight an alicorn, this is usually considered to be the opus of the third season, due to its awesome songs and tugging on the heartstrings both negatively and positively.

Pinkie Pie's laugh. Since she's the Element of Laughter, it really isn't surprising that her happy little giggle is nice to hear.

Princess Cadance's singing voice.

For that matter, the sound of Princesses Cadance, Luna and Celestia singing in choir.

Narm: Hasbro has taken to using Wilhelm Screams in pretty much every single episode of Season 4.

However, there are a few occasions wherein it reaches Narm Charm levels. Most notably in Season 4, episode 6, wherein the characters are inside an homage to Superhero comics. As well as Season 4, episode 4, which was a homage to Indiana Jones.

Narm Charm: While the show runners are absolutely aware of the older fans and pander to them frequently, at its core, this is still a show for young children. As a result, a lot of time it can be very corny, cheesy, sappy, Anvilicious, etc. But that's part of why the Periphery Demographic loves it, and it's usually done well enough to result in this trope instead of straight Narm.

The bronyfandom is this. Believe it or not, back in the 80s, there were a lot of boys watching G1 due to the adventure-filled plots that were highly unusual in girl's shows at the time. (Obviously, they didn't call themselves "bronies", though.) But since 4chan didn't exist back then, the franchise never caught on as boy-friendly at the time.

Another good example, that's slightly less old, would-be Sailor Moon fans from the nighties gave way to pretty much the same reaction as we're getting now the whole "these guys are a pile of happy cigarettes" from the haters and a "it's the turning point of masculinity" from the fans side.

Painful Rhyme: Crops up occasionally; the show's "songwriter" just composes the music and relies on the episodes' regular writers for lyrics. Pinkie's song in "Over a Barrel" invokes this intentionally.

Parvum Opus: The debate is usually open for a few episodes per season that are the weakest, usually due to unlikeable characterizations and flawed Aesops.

Season 2: "The Mysterious Mare Do Well" is often regarded as one of the worst episodes of the series. For some, it's due to the Mane Six taking a level in Jerkass while teaching Rainbow Dash humility. Others find Dash herself to be the problem, with the episode turning her into a self-centered Jerk Ass who's more concerned with her own glory than ensuring the safety of ponies whose lives are in danger- and then when another pony steps in to pick up her slack, Dash chooses to sulk about how nopony loves her anymore rather than realize that she needs to start taking things more seriously.

Season 4: "Rainbow Falls", for its contrived plot and for the Wonderbolts taking a level in Jerkass. The bad writing choices during this episode also prevented the Equestria Games arc's last episode from having any meaningful payoff. (Because this episode stated ponies could only compete in one event each, "Equestria Games" had to focus its story on Spike.)

Similar with Rarity, they also provided a sound effect for Pinkie's uvula wiggling around during her "I'm at the Grand Galloping Gala" song.

Overlapping with Shown Their Work, "Return of Harmony, Part 2" has the ponies' pupil sizes increase and decrease accordingly as Discord screws with the sun and moon.

Seinfeld Is Unfunny: The quality of the writing in the early Season 1 episodes (especially the two-part pilot) may seem quite low to people who are used to watching the later episodes, which have a lot more Parental Bonus and Fandom Nods. This was before Hasbro knew about the show's Periphery Demographic, so it's justified.

So Bad, It's Good: In-Universe example. In "The Show Stoppers", the Cutie Mark Crusaders decide to perform an "epic rock ballad" for the local talent show. The performance is an unmitigated disaster, with off-key singing, poor choreography, many special effect failures, and costumes straight out of The '80s. At first, the crowd watches in stunned silence, but howl in laughter when it's over. The group ends up winning an award...for "Best Comedy Act."

Her helmet seemed to be re-used for her Commander Hurricane role in "Hearth's Warming Eve", however.

That is to say, cool for a superhero. For a formal dance... perhaps not so much. Then again, her reason for attending was to crash the Wonderbolts' performance with her flying moves, so it makes sense she initially thought the dress would work.

"Magical Mystery Cure". You know that there's going to be more coming when it looks like the problem's solved and everything's going to be all fine and dandy...with a third of the episode left.

In Inspiration Manifestation, Rarity has made her creative contribution to the Foal and Filly Fair, nothing bad has happened, and she's about to return the book to Spike...and at this point, we're only eight minutes into the episode. She decides to hold onto the book for just a little while longer...

The scene where the sun is setting in "Lesson Zero" has a suspiciously similar Version of the "Dream is Collapsing" theme from Inception. And in the scene immediately following, The Princess' Speech is emphasized by music from... The King's Speech.

The music playing at Iron Will's seminar in "Putting Your Hoof Down" is actually Eye of the Tiger with one note changed. In the same episode, when Fluttershy realizes she's become a monster, the Lonely Man theme from The Incredible Hulk starts playing.

During the scene in the episode "It's About Time" where Twilight Sparkle meets a future version of herself, the background music is suspiciously similar to "I am the Doctor" from Series 5 and 6 of Doctor Who.

"One Bad Apple" features an A-Team Montage while the CMC are building the second float, down to the music.

A parody of the Bonanza theme is often used in scenes relating to the Apple family.

Watch It for the Meme: This is generally how many fans started watching the show, but quite a few of them actually care more about the show than seeing Lyra/Bon Bon in the background.

This is debatable, as any episode involving an appearance by Derpy can fill comment pages simply pleased with her appearance and nothing else in the episode. The most egregious example was The Last Roundup, which may as well only have been the opening five minutes of the episode.

It shouldn't be surprising when you think about it, but the Japanese dub has done a marvelous job at adapting much of the wordplay to its language as well as anime conventions.

All characters use the appropriate Japanese Pronouns to fit their personalities. Right down to Rainbow Dash being a Bokukko, Luna using warawa in line with her Antiquated Linguistics, and formal, dignified Celestia using watakushi.

In the English version, Spike has trouble writing the letter because he can't spell some of the words. In the Japanese dub, this is changed to him misinterpreting Twilight's "kiki wo semaru (a crisis draws near)" as "mimi ga tsumaru (my ears are clogged)".

In the first episode, Rarity was complaining about Twilight Sparkle's mane being messy after meeting Rainbow Dash. In the Japanese version, this was changed into Rarity congratulating Twilight for her mane instead (albeit in a very sarcastic way), due to Rarity using Tatemae on Twilight.

In the Japanese dub, Applejack's Element is named "Element of Trust" rather than "Element of Honesty". This is arguably more fitting since "trust" is more applicable to the theme of friendship while still being connected to the trait of "honesty".

Much of the dialogue for Applebuck Season is of Applejack misinterpreting what others have said due to mishearing things. Naturally, a few things have been changed around: Applejack mishears hanashigashitai ("needing to talk") as hawomigashitai ("needing to brush your teeth" ) and tasuke (help) as shiitake (as in the mushroom). During the baking scene, Applejack mishears komugiko no ichikappu ("one cup of flour") as kiiroi no ichikappu ("one cup of yellow") and the confusion between "wheat germ" and "wheat worms" became one between bakuga ("malt powder") and ga ("moths"). The "baked bads" joke was also changed to a pun on keeki (cake) and higeiki (tragedy).

In the Japanese dub version of "Dragonshy", Rarity's "talk about getting your beauty sleep" remark is changed to one complaining that 100 years of smoky skies over Equestria can't be good for the skin.

A lot of the wordplay in "Bridle Gossip" had to be changed. The exchange "She's a zebra"/"A what?" becomes a play on shimauma (Japanese for "zebra") and umashima ("meaningless"). Spike's new nicknames for the cursed ponies include "Mojarity" (from mojamoja, meaning "hairy"), "Tsubaki Pie" (Japanese for "spit"), "Garagara Shy" (Japanese for "raspy-voiced"), and "Twilight Funyafunya" (Japanese for "limp").

They also had to change Pinkie Pie's wordplay in "Fall Weather Friends". Her joke on the phrase "What's up?" becomes a play on genki, which literally means "cheery" but can also be used to ask "How are you doing?" The "grudge/fudge" banter becomes a play on "marathon" and "maracas", and the "catch up/ketchup" joke becomes a play on kecchaku ("to settle") and kecchappu ("ketchup").

When Spike opens the door in "Feeling Pinkie Keen", a sound effect plays of a truck backing up as he backs out of the door. The Japanese dub, however, adds a bit of Cultural Translation by having Spike say the voice clip that plays when trucks back up in Japan: "Bakkushimasu, gochuui kudasai (Backing up, please be careful)."

The Japanese dub of "Sonic Rainboom" inserts an added joke where Twilight notes that Rainbow's face is turning blue, to which she points out that she's always been blue.

In "Stare Master", the pun on Rarity "biting off more than [she] can chew" ("But you're not eating anything.") becomes a play on mucha ("excessive") and ocha ("tea"). The Title Drop near the end of the original episode is turned into a Call Back to Fluttershy claiming to be "champion" of the "Ssh" game.

In the original version, "Return of Harmony Part 1" ended with a standard "To Be Continued" title card. The Japanese version, however, spices it up a little by having Discord straight up break the fourth wall by saying "To Be Continued" in Japanese ("Tsuzuku"). Princess Cadance does this as well at the end of "A Canterlot Wedding - Part 1", but in a more creepy manner.

Discord's line of "I don't turn ponies into stone" is made to sound more menacing in the Japanese version. In the original, he was mocking Princess Celestia's turning him into stone, but in the Japanese dub, he says "Shall I turn these ponies into stone?" as if he were threatening to do the same to Twilight and the others.

Apple Bloom speaks formal Japanese instead of French in the Japanese dub of "The Cutie Pox", which fits better with Applejack's line "My sister's speaking in fancy!", to which Twilight snarks in the Japanese version, "It doesn't suit her."

The Japanese version of "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" changes Mare-Do-Well's name to Dark Mare, which fits better as a homage to Batman, the Dark Knight.

In the Japanese version of "Family Appreciation Day", the Zap Apples are known as "Biribiringo", a portmanteau of biribiri (an onomatopoeia representing electricity) and ringo (the Japanese word for "apple").

The Japanese version of "The Last Roundup" manages to replicate Pinkie mistaking Rainbow Dash's line of getting Applejack to "spill the beans" line for Applejack hogging snacks by having Rainbow say that she's "talking as if something is stuck in her back teeth", which Pinkie interprets as Applejack hogging candy.

The joke that Rainbow tries to tell her roommate in the Japanese version of "Read It and Weep" is changed from "Why did the chicken cross the road?" to a pun on "pan" (bread) and "frying pan".

The old pony that cuts in front of Fluttershy in "Putting Your Hoof Down" mishears Fluttershy's "warakomi" (cutting) as "waraboshi" (wooden chopsticks) in the Japanese dub.

The English version of "MMMMystery on the Friendship Express" parodies the James Bond franchise by referring to Donut Joe as "Mane. Con Mane". The Japanese dub does something similar by referring to him as "00-Pony", a play on "007", James Bond's code number.

In the English version, Pinkie says "who did it" instead of "whodunit". In the Japanese version, she says "annin" (apricot) instead of "hannin" (culprit).

The play on "donuts" and "do-nots" is changed to a play on "donuts" and "dou natten" (what's going on).

Twilight refers to Shining Armor with the abbreviation "anieshin", which is short for "aniki eien shinyuu" (Big Brother Best Friend Forever). It does help it sounds a lot like aniue (Elder brother, used in more polite terms, especially between royal members of a family)

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy